I glanced at Evie. She shook her head. “No,” I said. “Don't worry about it.”
“I'm the manager here,” he said. “I apologize for this.”
“It's not your fault,” said Evie.
“Come back,” he said. “Please. Be my guest. Lobster dinner on the house. I'll be sure that fellow leaves you alone.”
“Thank you,” I said. “Maybe we'll take you up on it.” I got my feet under me, and Evie helped me to stand up. I leaned on her until a wave of dizziness passed.
“Sure you're okay?” said the manager. “I can call an ambulance.”
I shook my head. “Forget it. Really.”
He looked at me for a minute, then nodded. “Come back, okay?”
“Sure,” I said. “Thanks.”
We got into the car and sat there for a minute. I lit a cigarette.
“You okay to drive?” said Evie.
“I'm fine,” I said. “A little embarrassed, that's all.”
“I'm the one who should be embarrassed.”
“You nailed him with a good shot,” I said. “Me, I got my ass kicked.”
“You think you should be able to beat up a man fifteen years younger than you, an ex-Marine?”
“Hey,” I said. “I'm a guy. No guy likes to get whipped. Especially in front of his woman.”
She reached over and put her hand on the back of my neck. “We girls go all melty when a white knight comes riding up to defend our honor. And when he gets knocked off his steed, our maternal instincts kick in.”
“You gonna nurse my wounds?”
“Umm,” she said. “Not just your wounds.”
“We better get going, then.” I started up the car, pulled out of the lot, and aimed for our cottage in Brewster.
We rode in comfortable silence for several minutes. Then Evie said, “I just figured something out.”
“What's that?”
“You didn't include a note with those flowers that you had delivered to my office.”
I didn't say anything.
“I thought that was a truly romantic notion,” she said. “No note, but no note needed, of course. Who else could possibly send them but my very own sweetie? Flowers say everything all by themselves.”
“Honey,” I said, “actuallyâ”
“You didn't send those flowers, did you?”
“Well, no. Not exactly.”
“It was Larry.”
“I thought itâ”
“You lied to me,” she said.
“Well, I never saidâ”
“All along, I'm thinking ⦠I'm so touched that my adorable curmudgeon would do something so out of character. So old-fashioned. So romantic. And it wasn't you at all.”
“I thought it was Julie,” I said. “Sending them on my behalf.”
“You could've told me.”
“I was going to,” I said. “But I liked how it made you happy.”
“If you'd told me it was Julie, I would've laughed,” she said. “I know you. You don't think of things like sending flowers.”
“You're right. I don't. I wish I did, but I don't.”
“So you lied to me.”
“Well, technicallyâ”
“Brady, goddamn it, don't you even think about playing lawyer with me.”
“Sorry.”
Evie sighed. I recognized that particular sigh. Exasperation and disappointment, mingled with anger. She hitched herself as far away from me as she could in the seat beside me and turned her face to the side window.
After a minute, I said, “Larry called me âMr. Lawyer.' And he knew which one was my car. How's he know about me?”
“I don't know how Larry knows things. He knows where I work. He knows we're down here on the Cape.”
“Butâ”
“You're not listening to me,” she said. “I told you. I do
not
want to talk about it.”
When we got back to the cottage, I poured us each a snifter of brandy. I handed one to Evie and said, “How about that hot tub?”
She shook her head. “I'm not in the mood anymore.”
“We can't let Larry spoil our time.”
“It's not Larry,” she said. “It's you.”
I took my brandy out onto the deck, and after a few minutes Evie came out. We leaned our elbows on the rail and looked out over the marsh. The fog had evaporated, and the moon reflected off the glassy water.
“Pretty, huh?” I said.
“Yes,” said Evie softly. “It's pretty.”
“You going to be mad for a while?”
“I think so.”
“What do you want me to say?”
“Nothing.”
I put my arm around her. She stiffened for a moment, then allowed me to hug her against me.
“I'm sorry for deceiving you,” I said. “It'll never happen again.”
She hesitated, then chuckled. “It probably will. Don't worry about it. It's no big deal, and it's stupid of me to hold it against you. Compared to every other man I've known, you are positively saintly.”
I snapped my fingers. “Saintly. Something Larry said. He said he had something to tell you about your âsaint.' What was that all about?”
“Can we please forget about Larry?”
“None of my business, you mean.”
“I mean exactly what I said. I don't want to talk about Larry. I don't want to think about Larry. Okay?”
“Sure,” I said. “Okay.”
Before we went to bed, I retrieved the key from under the doormat and locked the doors and the glass sliders.
Evie was at the sink putting together the coffee for the morning. “What are you doing?” she said.
“Locking up.”
She shook her head. “God
damn
him. I refuse to let him ruin our weekend.”
“No harm in locking the doors.”
“And what?” she said. “No more wandering around the house naked? No playing footsie in the hot tub? The hell with that. Larry is harmless, and I'm going to pretend he doesn't exist.”
“Good,” I said. “Me too.” But I didn't mean it.
When I woke up the next morning, the light was gray through the windows. Somewhere out there a pair of bobwhites were whistling to each other.
Evie was sitting on the edge of the bed.
“What time is it?” I said.
“Little after five. Go back to sleep.”
“What're you doing?”
“I can't sleep. I'm going running.” She came around to my side of the bed, bent over, kissed my forehead, then turned for the door. Evie was tall and slim and curvy, and she had long auburn hair. This morning she'd pulled it back into a ponytail, and it hung halfway down her back. She was wearing a white T-shirt and pink running shorts cut high on her hips. She looked trim and athletic and incredibly sexy.
I gave her a bobwhite whistle.
She paused in the doorway, put one hand on her hip and the other behind her head, thrust out her pelvis, licked her lips, and flashed a parody of a half-lidded Marilyn Monroe smile. “I'll be back,” she said. “Don't you move, big guy.”
“Wait,” I said. “What about â¦?”
She held up her hand. It held a cylinder about the size of a shotgun shell. “Pepper spray,” she said. “I carry it for dogs. All species of dogs. Don't you worry about me. Go back to sleep.”
“Yes, ma'am.” I bunched a pillow under my head, listened to the bobwhites for a few minutes, and eventually I drifted back to sleep.
Sometime later I woke up from a disturbing dream in which people were screaming, and it took me a moment to realize I was awake and I was still hearing the screaming. It came from somewhere outside the cottage, and it was Evie and she was yelling for help.
I
scrambled out of bed, pulled on my pants, and ran barefoot out of the house.
Evie was still screaming. “Help! Brady, help! Oh, please, somebody help me!”
I followed the sound of her voice up the driveway, and around the bend about a hundred yards from the cottage I saw her kneeling at the side of the dirt road.
I ran up to her. A man was lying in the weeds. He was sprawled on his back. It was Larry Scott. He was wearing khaki pants and a blue polo shirt. His pale eyes were staring blankly up at the sky. The front of his shirt was shiny with dark, wet blood.
He looked thoroughly dead.
My first thought was that Evie had killed him.
She was kneeling there, pounding her thighs with her fists. Her face was wet with tears and her eyes were wild and her chest was heaving. Her breaths came in shuddering gasps. I
knelt beside her and put my arm around her. She turned to me and burrowed her face into my chest.
I held her tight in my arms. “It's okay,” I murmured. “It's okay, baby.”
“He's dead,” she whispered. “Isn't he?”
I reached over and pressed two fingers up under Larry's jawbone. I found no pulse. “Yes,” I said. “He's dead.”
Evie looked up at me. “I didn't ⦔
“I know, honey. Tell me what happened.”
She pressed her palms over her eyes. I took out my handkerchief and handed it to her. She wiped her face and blew her nose, then balled the handkerchief up in her hand. “I ran out to the end of the dirt road,” she said. “I saw rabbits and quail along the way. I turned right on 6A, ran into town, hooked around a back road down to the ocean, and the sun came up and burned off the fog, and when I figured I'd gone about two miles, I turned around and started back. And I was just coming along here and ⦠and I saw him. He was just ⦠lying there. Like that. Like he is.” She looked up at me with wide, pleading eyes. “After what happened last night,” she said softly, “I was thinking, I was wishing he was dead. I thought about killing him, I really did.”
“But you didn't,” I said, although the thought still lingered that she might have. “Somebody else did. It's not your fault. You didn't see him on your way out?”
She shrugged. “The sun wasn't up then. It was shadowy and foggy, and I was running pretty fast, looking ahead for rabbits on the road. No, I didn't see him. Maybe he was there then. His body. I don't know.”
“We've got to call the police. Can you do that?”
She frowned at me. “Me?”
“One of us should stay here with him.”
“Not me,” she said. “I'm not doing that.”
“Then you've got to make the call.”
“What do I say?”
“Dial 911. Just tell them that we have a dead person here. They'll ask where you are and tell you to stay there. After that, come back here. Bring my cigarettes with you.”
She nodded. “Want coffee?”
“Absolutely.”
I got to my feet, reached down, and helped Evie up. She held on to me.
“You going to be all right?” I said.
She shrugged.
I kissed her forehead. “Go call the cops.”
She gave me a quick hug, then started jogging to the cottage. She ran a few steps, then stopped and turned back to me. “I didn't do it, you know,” she said.
“I know.”
She frowned, nodded, and headed to the cottage.
After Evie disappeared around the bend, I squatted down beside Larry Scott's body. The entire front of his shirt was soaked with blood. I touched it with my finger. It had just begun to coagulate. He hadn't been dead for long.
It looked like too much blood for a gunshot, unless he'd been shot in the back and the bullet had exited his stomach. If he'd been shot in the back, I figured he'd've fallen on his face. But he was lying on his back.
A knife wound, I guessed. I bent and looked closer, and under the thick shiny blood I saw two rips in his shirt, one just to the left of his navel and another a bit higher, right under his rib cage.
Whoever killed him had been standing directly in front of him, close enough to ram a knife into him. Twice.
Who?
Evie? I couldn't believe it. Not Evie. Maybe she'd have
squirted her pepper spray in his face if he'd approached her. The lawyer in me tried to be objective, but the Evie I knew was incapable of murder.
Then I thought: How well do I really know her? Before yesterday, I didn't even know her mother was from Maine, or that her grandfather was a lobsterman. Before yesterday I'd never heard of Larry Scott. She'd never told me about any of her old relationships or why she'd left her job in Cortland and gone to work at Emerson Hospital in Concord.
I really didn't know much about Evie Banyon's life.
But I knew
her
.
Evie couldn't stick a knife into anybodyâeven a man who had stalked her and haunted her until she thought she was crazy; who had finally driven her away from her home and her job; who had somehow managed to track her down here to Brewster on Cape Cod after being out of her life and her thoughts for more than three years.
Evie?
Evie wore her maple syrupâcolored hair in a ponytail and got butter all over her face when she ate lobster and mocked herself with a funny, seductive, half-lidded Marilyn Monroe smile. Evie loved Monet's paintings and Debussy's music and Jane Austen's novels and Jim Carrey's dumb movies. She loved ducks and birch trees and daisies and cows. She loved jogging before sunrise and throwing a frisbee on the beach. She loved making love.
She loved me.
I squatted there, looking at Larry Scott's body.
Not Evie.
If not Evie, who?
She might have an idea, but I didn't.
I knew better than to move Larry's body or tromp around the area. But I stood up and looked around. If there was a murder weapon nearby, I didn't see it.
After a few minutes, Evie came back. She'd pulled on a pair of blue jeans and one of my flannel shirts over her T-shirt, and she was carrying two mugs of coffee.
She'd washed her face and brushed her hair. It looked like she was done crying.
I stood up and took a mug from her. “You made the call?”
She nodded. “They're on their way.” She reached into her shirt pocket, took out a pack of cigarettes, and handed it to me. “Light one for me, will you?”
I lit two cigarettes and gave her one. Evie was one of those lucky people who could smoke half a pack of cigarettes in an evening and then go for two months without wanting one. She liked to share a cigarette with me after we made love. We'd pass it back and forth as we lay on our backs looking up at the ceiling, blowing plumes of smoke into the darkness. Sometimes, when she was upset about something, or upset with me, she'd ask for a cigarette. She'd puff at it furiously until it was half gone, then stab it out as if she were angry at the ashtray.
“So what's going to happen?” she said.
“The local cops will come, verify that there's been a homicide. Then the state cops will come. They're the ones who handle homicide investigations. They'll separate us and ask us questions. This whole area”âI swept my hand aroundâ“will be a crime scene.”
“What kind of questions?” she said.
“Everything,” I said. “You'll have to tell them all about Larry.”
“It's a long story.”
“They'll want to hear it all, and you'll probably have to tell it several times.” I hesitated. “Don't volunteer anything. Just answer their questions. You might want to have a lawyer with you.”
She cocked her head and frowned at me. “Why would I want a lawyer?”
I shrugged. “Their questioning might get pretty intense and confusing. A lawyer can help you through it.”
“No offense,” she said, “but I don't need a damn lawyer.”
“Well, you know you can change your mind at any time. All you have to do is ask for one, and they'll have to stop questioning you.”
“Are you reading me my rights?”
I shook my head. “No, honey. Just trying to tell you what'll probably happen.”
Evie took a quick drag on her cigarette, threw it down onto the dirt road, and ground it out under her foot as if she were squashing a poisonous bug. Then she folded her arms across her chest, turned away, and gazed off into the woods.
I touched her shoulder, and she flinched away from me.
So we stood there beside Larry's body, and after a minute, sirens howled in the distance, and then two police cruisers came barreling over the hilltop. Their sirens squawked as they skidded to a stop, and they left a billow of dust in their wake.
Each cruiser held two police officers. Three of them got out, leaving the driver of the second cruiser behind the wheel to tend the radio.
One cop went over and looked down at Larry Scott's body. The other two approached Evie and me. One was a middle-aged guy with gray showing under his cap. The other was an olive-skinned young female officer who looked like she'd been cultivating the hard scowl on her face.
The female spoke to Evie, then led her over to one of the cruisers. The gray-haired guy stood in front of me. “Sergeant Costello,” he said. “Brewster PD.”
“Brady Coyne,” I said. “I'm a lawyer in Boston. We're renting this cottage for the weekend.” I held out my hand.
He didn't seem to notice it. “I want you to come over and sit in the cruiser, sir. We've got to wait for the state police to get here.”
“I know how it works,” I said.
He nodded. “I'm sure you do, sir.”
He led me to the second cruiser. Evie was sitting in the back seat of the first one. The doors were closed and the female officer was sitting in front. Evie was staring out the side window, and when I tried to catch her eye, she shifted her gaze to somewhere behind me.
I climbed in the back. Costello put his hand on top of my head to steer me in, closed the door behind me, then got in front. He left his door open. A wire mesh separated us. He mumbled something that was not intended for my ears to the cop behind the wheel, who turned and grinned at him.
After about five minutes I said, “Do you mind if I smoke?”
“Yes,” Costello said without turning around.
A few minutes later two more cars rolled up behind us. They were both unmarked sedans, and they had not heralded their arrival with sirens. State cops in plain clothes.
Costello got out and went over to talk to them.
“Now what happens?” I said to the officer behind the wheel.
He did not answer me.
After a while Costello came back, slid into the front seat, slammed the door, and said, “Let's go.”
The driver managed to turn around on the narrow dirt road, and we headed into town. Costello spoke into the car radio. I couldn't make out what he said.
At the station Costello led me into a small room in the back. It had one square window high on the wall. It was covered with thick wire mesh. In the middle of the room stood a single rectangular steel table with six straight-backed wooden chairs around it. A big metal ashtray brimming with old cigarette butts sat on the table.
“Have a seat, sir,” said Costello. “You can smoke in here if you want. Can I get you some coffee?”
“Sure,” I said, “thanks. Black.”
He shut the door behind him, and I didn't need to check to know it was locked from the outside.
A few minutes later he was back. He put a heavy ceramic mug in front of me and left without saying anything.
It wasn't bad for police-station coffee. I sipped it and smoked and sat there in the uncomfortable wooden chair. I assumed Evie was getting the same treatment in an adjacent room.
I didn't need my lawyer training to realize that we were both prime suspects. Dozens of people had witnessed Evie's confrontation with Larry Scott at the restaurant. Several others had seen him beat me up in the parking lot. The police wouldn't have much trouble learning that Larry had harassed Evie back when she was living in Cortland and that he'd tracked us down here to the Cape.
Means, motive, and opportunity. Either or both of us had plenty of all three. I didn't know anybody else who'd want Larry dead, but I didn't know anything about him. I hoped Evie could come up with somebody.
I waited nearly an hour before the door opened and two men came in. The bulky, bald-headed one introduced himself as state police homicide detective Neil Vanderweigh. He wore a gray summer-weight suit with a solid-blue necktie that he'd pulled loose. His collar button was undone. The younger blond guy was Sergeant Lipton. He wore a green sports jacket, gray slacks, pale blue shirt, no necktie.