The Book of Old Houses (21 page)

Dave bit his lip hard. Sooner or later these sudden attacks of grief would ease.

Wouldn't they? “What did your husband die from?” Dave asked Liane Myers.

She stiffened. “Suicide,” she said brusquely. “Pills.”

And then, in an aggrieved rush: “But first he wrote a letter accusing me of doing it. So I'd get blamed for it, and the police
believed
it.”

Her blue eyes filled with a child's resentment. Dave played along. “That wasn't very nice of him. So there was a trial?”

“Yes. But he was always mean. So the jury believed me when I said he'd written that letter just to hurt me.”

Something calculating in her tone, her eyes sneaking a quick peek sideways at Dave as she spoke.

Seeing if he believed it. “That was lucky for you, wasn't it?” Dave asked.

She'd have worn the wedding ring until afterward. The grieving widow would've played better to a jury. He guessed aloud again, more certainly this time. “You didn't happen to be in Orono the night Horace died?”

“No! Why should I—”

Too late, she remembered the credit cards she'd mentioned; he saw it on her face. If she was in Orono overnight she'd have had to use a card to get a room. And credit-card records, as everyone knew, could be checked.

She swallowed hard. “Okay, I was there. I wanted to meet him,” she admitted. “I thought if I did, maybe he would—but he got killed instead. Just my luck,” she finished bitterly.

“You thought maybe he'd give you money. And when he didn't?” He advanced on her as he spoke.

She backed away. “No! I drove to his house, but I never even got the nerve to go up to the door.”

“I see.”

Her face darkened like that of the old
bruja
in the adobe dwelling where the firelight had flickered weirdly. “You know what?” the girl asked suddenly. “How do I know
you
didn't do it? You get the money. You knew where he was. I think I'll tell the cops maybe
you
killed my father.” With that she slammed into the small red car and roared off, her blonde hair flying.

Dave watched her go, thinking that if ever he was glad he had listened to Horace's research advice, it was now. Liane Myers was angry and penniless, and he thought maybe she really had done away with that husband of hers no matter what she'd conned a jury into thinking about it.

And that, he realized, was where his sudden calm had come from; not the notion of getting money but the feeling of a brand-new fact slotting decisively into its rightful place.

Twenty-four hours earlier, he'd believed the only suspect in Horace's death was Bert Merkle, his motive a strange old book.

But now things looked different.

Completely different.

Again. Dave started the Saab and drove to the end of Water Street where the windswept rolling fields and high, grassy bluffs of Dog Island began. He parked by the side of the road, already scanning the pavement for his tie pin.

Not far off lay Merrie Fargeorge's saltwater farm: fence, barn, house. A little dog frisked in a shaded run near the porch. A shovel stuck up from a pile of earth in the excavation pit; other tools, neatly arranged, lay side-by-side on a tarp.

Dave retraced in his mind his steps of the day before. The tie pin was here somewhere; he was sure of it.

Chapter
15

Y
ou're not going to believe this,” said Ellie soon after
Liane Myers drove away from my house.

I was coming out of the post office where I'd sent off one of the coupons I'd received that morning, in hopes of winning a vacation in Costa Rica. I would have to inspect time-share condos while I was there and perhaps even pretend to be able to buy.

But maybe when I got home the bathroom would be fixed up, Bella and my dad would've eloped, and Sam would've finally landed hard on both feet instead of tentatively on one.

“What?” I asked as Ellie steered me across Water Street.

“The state cops've decided Jason Riverton's death was an accident, that's what.”

“You're kidding!” I let myself be led into the Moose Island General Store, past the cooler and the shelves full of local products: smoked salmon, stone-ground mustard, hand-knit woolen socks, and gourmet chocolates. Behind the counter Skippy Fillmore was slicing onions for hero sandwiches; his apron today said
I Brake 4 Margaritas.

“Nope,” Ellie said. With a wave at Skippy she plucked two bottles from the cooler, got cups and a plastic tray.

“Take one blind woman, add a jug of antifreeze, stir with a bottle of strawberry syrup sitting right next to the jug, and . . . well, the plot turns. Or the worm thickens, or whatever.”

I followed her out onto the deck. “I don't understand. What strawberry syrup?”

“The Slurpee drinks,” she said. “They'd buy a supply of them on their trips to Augusta. But the drinks would thaw out by the time they got them home. The ice in them melted.”

“Oh,” I breathed, beginning to understand. “So . . .”

Ellie nodded energetically. “So every time she served him one she'd pour some of the diluted stuff out and add a big dollop of strawberry syrup. Jason,” she added, “didn't know.”

“She kept the syrup in the cabinet under the sink.”

“Uh-huh. This is what she told the cops. A great big dollop, half a cup, maybe. Because remember, they were those forty-ouncers.”

So they'd take plenty of syrup. Inside, the little bell over the door jingled; Skippy left his onions, wiping his hands on his apron-front as he approached the counter.

“There'll still be an autopsy,” Ellie continued. “But under the sink right next to the syrup jug the cops found an empty spot like a footprint, same size and shape as the antifreeze bottle.”

We hadn't looked under the sink. “So she might've . . .”

“Exactly. The stuff in Jason's cup plus Mrs. Riverton's blindness
and
the arrangement in the sink cabinet was diagnostic, in the crime-scene guys' opinion. Barring new evidence, the state cops told Bob Arnold they've just about made up their minds.”

“She reaches down, grabs the wrong jug, doesn't notice . . . But, Ellie, that doesn't work. She had a fifty-fifty chance of getting the real strawberry syrup instead of the antifreeze, didn't she?”

“Not if the syrup wasn't there at the time,” said Ellie.

“Oh. Oh, gosh, what a lousy trick. You mean someone could've come back and . . .”

“Set the stage for the second act, right. First replace the syrup with the antifreeze. Later come back and put the antifreeze jug in the trash, slip the syrup into its usual place. Afterward it would look as if Mrs. Riverton had mixed them up. Which is how it does look,” Ellie added. “Just not to us.”

“Wow,” I said. “I guess that takes care of any illusions I might've had. Like, that maybe somebody else was going to deal with all of this.”

Because if the cops thought Jason Riverton's death was accidental then that was the end of it, the opinions of a couple of Eastport housewives notwithstanding. We sat in glum silence at the picnic table on the deck for a while, digesting the situation; then I told Ellie about Liane Myers's visit.

“A real wannabe heiress?” she asked. “The kind who sues? I don't think I've ever met one of those.”

But there was something more on Ellie's mind. She pushed an open address book across the table between our cups of Moxie; Ann Talbert's name was written on the first page of the book.

“You got some of her relatives' names out of it, then, for the hospital?” I asked.

She nodded. “When I got home last night I called, gave the cops all the names and numbers that looked likely. But by then Lee was fussy and George was grumpy—you know how he gets when something bad happens on the water—and I was dead on my feet.”

Like many coastal natives, George regarded salt water rather differently from the way tourists saw it. Simply put, he thought the ocean was sitting out there just waiting for you, scheming to kill you even if the day was clear and the waves a calm, serene-appearing blue.

“Like me right now,” I said, meaning the dead-on-the-feet thing. As soon as Liane Myers had gone out the door I'd started feeling as if somebody were working me over with a brickbat.

The stairs fiasco, the party for Merrie Fargeorge, and after that the late, thoroughly unpleasant evening . . . they'd all taken a toll, and my body said pretty soon I'd have to start paying it.

The Bella-and-my-dad problem, too; I knew their truce of the night before was just that. She'd resist, he'd keep insisting—for all I knew she was writing her I-quit note right this minute.

But Moxie, the official soft drink of downeast Maine, tastes enough like medicine to make me feel better even if it isn't. “So?” I said, indicating the address book.

“So this morning I looked it over again,” Ellie said. “And this was inside.”

She lifted it and a folded sheet fell out, a flyer listing the dates of recent and upcoming meetings of a writers' group. It said Ann was scheduled to read some of her work at an evening meeting at a restaurant in Orono, the night Robotham died.

Which we'd already known, more or less. But now Ellie's look said she'd come up with a new slant on the information.

“Try this idea,” she said. “What if Jason did kill Horace to get the book?”

“But then how would Ann have ended up with it?”

She raised a finger. “I'm getting to that. But first back up a little. Maybe Jason could hit someone over the head and run, and maybe somebody would ask him to. I'm okay that far. But would you send him into a strange house to look for something right afterward, to steal it?”

“He was just a kid. Something unexpected came up, he might lose his head. I'd want someone who could stick to a plan, stay calm, improvise if he had to, and . . . oh.”

“If Merkle sent Jason to do the real bad-deed part, and Jason did it, then Merkle couldn't very well leave Jason walking around and able to talk about the whole thing afterward, could he?”

In other words, Merkle might want to eliminate Jason. “But,” Ellie added, “what if that's all Jason did? What if Merkle had two people doing his dirty work that night?”

I looked at the flyer again. The writers' meetings lasted from seven-thirty until ten. Say half an hour of schmoozing in the restaurant bar afterward . . .

“Ann would've had time to get there after the so-called mugging and wait for a chance to get in,” I said. “No guarantee the house would be empty right away, but—”

But sooner or later there was a good chance that it would be. “They probably asked Lang Cabell to go identify the body at the hospital,” Ellie agreed.

“So you could expect he'd at least be gone for that long.” In other words, long enough, and Ellie's theory provided a motive for Ann's death, too.

To shut her up, just as Jason had been shut up. “But, Ellie, it means Ann knew in advance that Jason was going to . . .”

“Not necessarily. Who knows what Merkle might have told her? And even if she suspected, people can manage to ignore a lot of things when they're getting what
they
want.”

And
want
was Ann's middle name, lately. “The story about someone mailing her the book could've been a lie, then,” I said. “And the envelope could've just been window dressing, something she could show in case somebody pressed her on the subject.”

Down in the boat basin a couple of teenaged boys hopped into a wooden dory, hauled a cooler off the dock into the boat with them, threw the line off, and rowed away. Moments later they were out past the breakwater, heading for open water. “Coming over to my house to demand it could've been part of the plan, too,” I added. “So I'd think she
didn't
have it. But if the idea was for Merkle to get it, then why did she, still? And why brag about it later?”

Ellie looked troubled. “I don't know. Maybe she realized what had really happened, once she learned Horace had died? And with that she had something to hold over Merkle. To make him let her keep it?”

Or so she'd have thought. Until it was too late. The bell over the door tinkled and Merrie Fargeorge entered the store, and spotted us through the sliding-glass doors leading to the deck.

“Good morning, Merrie,” I began in my cheeriest tone. Might as well at least try keeping things light, I thought.

But no dice. “Hmmph!” she sniffed. “Maybe for
you.
I want to know when you mean to put a stop to that man's awful snooping!”

So much for the party cheering her up permanently. “Merrie,” I began a little less sweetly, “I'm afraid that I'm not the boss of—”

She glared at me. “I don't care. You're the only one with a connection to him at all so you'll have to handle him. Do you,” she demanded, “have any idea how difficult it is to get some of these Eastport old-timers to open up and talk to a person?”

I couldn't say I'd ever had difficulty in that regard. My most recent visit notwithstanding, on most days just trying to get through the IGA in a timely manner was like swimming through soft tar, what with all the conversations involved.

But Merrie's research meant learning who'd slept with whom nine months before so-and-so was born way back in 1849, and never mind what baptismal records said. And the way people felt about family stuff around here, a blot on great-great-grandfather so-and-so's honor might as well be branded on their own foreheads.

“He's making people nervous,” she insisted. “And I want it
stopped.”

“Really.” I kept trying to be polite. But I was suddenly very glad she hadn't been my high-school teacher and she must've sensed it.

Her plump face hardened. “Of course you must do as you think best, Jacobia,” she said tightly.

Then she turned on the heel of her orthopedic shoe and tootled away, practically chuffing steam.

“Gosh, what do you suppose brought that on?” I breathed as we disposed of our soda cups on the way out of the store. Skippy waved a plastic spatula at us in farewell.

“No idea. If I had to guess, I'd say she's either seen Dave DiMaio again or heard from someone who has, and that's what's got her all fired up,” Ellie replied.

And then, surprisingly, “You know what, though? Maybe it's time we let go of all this.” She peered at me. “Because you look beat, and we're just not getting anywhere. Besides, you've got it, haven't you? Your book. Don't deny it, I saw it in your face last night.”

I hadn't meant to deny it. And she was right; we weren't winning this one. Not even close.

And not that it would be a big disaster for me if we didn't. If Merkle came after the old book I could call the cops. If that didn't work I could pay him a visit. Bring the Police Special and if
that
didn't work, the Bisley.

Or Wade. And believe me, only a guy with a death wish would ignore Wade. So life would go on.

And Jason Riverton's mother would go on believing that she'd killed her only son.

“Yeah, I've got it,” I said. “Has Margot Riverton moved back into their house yet?”

“No. She didn't want to stay at Merrie's, either. Bob told me she said Merrie'd gone to enough trouble trying to help Jason and look how that turned out. So she's in the assisted-living home for

now.” Ellie sighed. “She can't be on her own and she has no close family. She depended on Jason and from what I hear, she's afraid to live alone.”

“Does she have any money?”

“Social security. She had Jason's disability income, but now that'll be gone. And some rental income, I think, some little piece of property she owns somewhere that she's been renting out practically forever. But it's losing Jason's monthly check that's really going to destroy her.”

“Great. So there's another life ruined.”

I felt furious, suddenly; maybe at Merrie Fargeorge with her imperious demands and air of being entitled to have them met, no questions asked. Maybe at myself, because there was a connecting thread in all this somewhere and I wasn't seeing it.

Or possibly I just understood too well how Jason's mother felt, thinking her son's death was on account of something she did.