“Our divorce pretty much meant that, didn’t it?”
“In name only.”
“I thought one
married
in name only.”
“I mean truly through.” She gazed at me, her eyes shimmering pools. “In our hearts through.”
“Do you want us to be?”
“I don’t think I could stand it, darling,” she confessed. “I hated it when we weren’t speaking. There were so many times I reached for the phone. So many times I wanted you.”
“Me, too, Merilee.”
“But I also don’t think I could stand
us
again, either. You have this way of making me feel like an awkward thirteen-year-old girl again, all vulnerable and misty-eyed. I’m sorry, true love just isn’t for me anymore, darling. It hurts too much.”
“Not if you let yourself go.”
She shook her head. “I’m no longer that young or that foolish.”
“Sure you are. We both are.”
She smiled. “Cam Noyes has been good for you, hasn’t he?”
“I seriously doubt that.”
She looked over at the window dreamily. “When I was looking at the farm today, the very first thing I thought of was how … how nice it would be if only … ”
“If only what, Merilee?”
She shuddered. “Nothing. Just turning into a sentimental fool, I guess.”
Then she said good-night and went back across the hall to her own room.
I was already up and dressed when the plump, giggly teenager tapped on my door at dawn with my muffins and coffee. As soon as I’d eaten, I took off in the Jaguar with Lulu.
I drove north along the Connecticut River on Route 156, through marshland and forest, past the old Yankee dairy farms with their colonial farmhouses and lush green pasturage dotted with cows. There was early-morning fog, but it was lifting. I found the small marina at Hamburg Cove and rented a rowboat. It fit nose-down in the Jag with the top down and Lulu in my lap. Sort of. The state forest turnoff wasn’t far. It was a dirt road, heavily rutted and still muddy from the rain. I took it slowly. After a mile or so it dead-ended at Crescent Moon Pond, which wasn’t what I’d call a pond. It was a good half mile across to the dense forest on the other side. I saw no shack there. No one was out fishing.
I got the boat into the water and Lulu into her life vest. She’s the only dog I’ve ever met who can’t swim — she sinks to the bottom like a boulder. Then I pushed off and started rowing. It was very quiet out there aside from the birds and the sound of the water lapping gently against the boat. Lulu sat stiffly in the bow, weight back on her butt, front paws splayed awkwardly before her. Her large black nose quivered at the unfamiliar smells.
It wasn’t until I got halfway across that I realized how Crescent Moon Pond got its name — it had a severe crook in its middle. I hadn’t been looking at the other side at all, merely the bend. As I rounded it, the other side now came into view. And so did the shack, set back in the trees.
The mooring was rotted out, the footpath up to it overgrown. The wooden steps to the front porch were wobbly. So was the porch. The front door swung open and shut in the breeze off the pond. I heard something scurrying around inside. This time Lulu took charge — tore headlong into the shack, snarling ferociously. She flushed out an entire family of field mice. Then came strutting back to me, immensely pleased with herself.
“Good work, Lulu.”
Inside there was a black cast-iron wood stove, scarred pine table and chairs, an empty oil lantern, a few kitchen rudiments, piles of empty beer cans. Cigarette butts had been ground into the bare wooden floor. The tiny bedroom off the main room had a stained, mildewed mattress in it, and a pine dresser. Out back I could see a well with a hand pump, and an outhouse.
I had seen enough already, but when I went back into the main room and noticed what was hanging on the wall over the table I was convinced: It was the framed, mounted snakeskin. The one Smilin’ Jack had found in one of his wading boots.
It was just as Cam had described it to me.
The shack was real.
Old Lyme’s town hall was a stately old white building down Lyme Street from the Bee and Thistle. It being Saturday, they were open until noon. Locals were lined up at the front desk for their summer beach permits.
The town clerk here was round and white-haired, and a lot jollier than the one in Farmington. She told me all property deeds were recorded and filed by index number. To find out the index number you looked it up in the index book under the deed holders name. Not surprisingly, I found no deed holder named Cameron Sheffield Noyes. I asked the clerk what to do if I knew where the property was but not who owned it. She sent me to the assessor’s office to find out who’d been paying taxes on it.
The town assessor was a gruff, impatient old Yankee with two hearing aids and a white crew cut that he’d no doubt had since before they staged a comeback. I had barely begun to describe the shack at Crescent Moon Pond when he cut me off, pulled a surveyors map book down off a shelf, and began searching through it, licking his thumb as he went. When he found what he wanted, he dove into his files, harrumphed, and presented me with a name: Ferris Rush, Jr., c/o the Boyd Samuels Agency in New York, New York.
Hello, Ferris. Wish I could say I was pleased to meet you.
Back in the clerks office I tried the name Ferris Rush, Jr., in the index book. This time I got a number, and a look at the deed. Ferris Rush, Jr., of New York City had taken title to the shack on Crescent Moon Pond a little less than two years before, when he turned twenty-one. The property had been held in trust for him for the previous eight years by Ina Duke Rush of Port Arthur, Texas, received from the estate of John Rush of Essex, Connecticut, for no financial consideration.
I still didn’t have a lot of the answers. But now I did know something I hadn’t known throughout this whole damned collaboration.
I knew what questions to ask.
C
HARLIE HAD BROUGHT IN
my mail. Bills. Yushie gadget catalogues. And another, even sterner, handwritten note from the secretary of the Racquet Club. I was really going to have to do something about that.
The bed was neatly made. Her clothes were folded in a wicker, rope-handled trunk that she’d stashed in the closet. An extra toothbrush and a tube of Tom’s organic toothpaste were in the bathroom. A gauzy nightshirt hung from the hook on the back of the door.
A most unobtrusive little roommate. Hardly knew she was there, aside from the cloying smell of oil paint in the air. And from the kitchen. An easel stood in the middle of it on a drop cloth, directly under the skylight. Her paints and brushes were crowded onto the counter, along with spray cans and cements and rough charcoal sketches. Boxes of broken crockery and old bottles and magazines were piled up against one wall, her portfolios stacked against them. This invasion of her turf made Lulu uneasy. She nosed warily amongst the stuff, tail between her legs, as if she expected to encounter a cache of Mexican jumping beans.
Another nude was in progress on Charlie’s easel — this one a study of a young man. Her style was primitive. So was her subject. He was heavily muscled and exuded a raw, crude power. From the neck down, that is. She’d pasted the head of the Gerber’s baby on his shoulders.
It was Cam Noyes, or Ferris Rush, or whatever the hell you wanted to call him. I had a few choice names in mind myself. So, evidently, did she.
She’d left me a note by the phone, her handwriting square and careful.
H — I’ll be hanging around Rat’s Nest till six. Call me when you get back. We’ll go to lunch on my break at two. Hope I haven’t messed up your kitchen too much. I’ve missed you
—
C
I was really going to have to do something about that, too.
I glanced at grandfather’s Rolex. It was just past one. I called Rat’s Nest and left word with the clerk at the desk that I’d be there at two. Then I showered and dressed and called Vic.
“He’s taking his nap now, Hoag,” he reported. “We did our five miles and our errands and now he’s out cold. That contractor actually showed up while we were out. Put some dry wall up in the kitchen, then split. Nervy bastard was in and out before I could give him a piece of my mind.”
“They have an uncanny instinct for that,” I said. “They flit from job to job all day long, keeping as many as four customers unhappy at once.”
“I checked out that adult motel Cam said he went to the night of Miss Held’s death. He was there, all right, he and Miss Moscowitz. From eight until four the next morning. I found two White Castles on Ridgewood Avenue they might have stopped at on their way out, when Miss Held was pushed. Nobody remembered them at either place. That’s not a good sign. They’re both recognizable celebrities.”
“That car of his doesn’t exactly whisper, either.”
“She was with us last night — Miss Moscowitz,” said Vic. “She’s some kind of handful. A little strident for my own personal taste, but —”
“She stay the entire night?”
“She’d already left for the studio when I got up at six,” he replied. “I figured it was okay, her staying here. She’s encouraging him to stay off the coke. And better they’re here together under this roof than out who knows where.”
“I agree.”
“He’s starting to make some progress, Hoag. The last couple of days he’s had a real sparkle in his eyes. He’s practically a new man.”
“I’ll say he is.”
“Excuse me?”
“I think we should keep up our guard on Merilee.”
“I’ll leave right now, stay with her until tonight’s curtain. Can you get down here and take over Cam?”
“There’s a lunch date I’d like to keep first, unless … ”
“No, no, go ahead,” Vic insisted. “He’s fast asleep. She didn’t let him get much rest last night, believe me. He’ll be fine here by himself for an hour or two. And of more use to you afterward. Enjoy your meal, Hoag.”
I caught a cab downtown.
Charlie was up there on her canvas waiting for me, blue from head to toe. Blue Monday. All except for the red stain where the bowie knife had been plunged into her stomach right up to its brass hilt.
Two blue-and-whites and some unmarked sedans were parked out from. The steel door was wide open with a yellow police cordon across it. A uniformed cop stood guard. Gawkers crowded the sidewalk.
At the reception desk a plainclothesman was interviewing the clerk with the Buddy Holly glasses. She was shaking her head and sobbing.
A half dozen cops were fanned around Blue Monday, staring, murmuring grimly to each other. They could have been admirers at an exhibition, except for the one who was dusting the handle of the knife for fingerprints.
I stood there staring, too. At the blood. At the eyes that didn’t move or blink. My chest felt heavy. I was thinking about that extra toothbrush in my bathroom and those neatly folded clothes in the wicker trunk. I was thinking about what might have happened that was never going to happen now. Not ever.
I stood there staring at the bowie knife. His bowie knife.
Lulu shifted restlessly at my feet.
One of the cops was watching me. It was Romaine. Very. His bike was leaning against the lumpy fifteen-thousand-dollar statue. They hadn’t sold it yet, for some reason. He motioned for me to step outside with him. I took one more look at Charlie. Then I did.
“Yo, like, how come you keep showing up at murder scenes, dude?” he demanded, gum popping, one knee quaking. “I mean, it’s getting a little
funny
.”
“It’s getting hysterical.”
He belched and made a face. “I hate looking at dead chicks. Especially pretty ones.”
“Can you tell me what happened?”
He looked up at me, head nodding rhythmically, eyes narrow slits. He took his time. Finally he shrugged, yanked a pad out of the back pocket of his jeans, and opened it. “The clerk, one Rita Gersh of Great Neck, Long Island, stepped out for a break at two. Went to hit the cash machine at her bank, get herself a sandwich and coffee. Miss Chu, the victim, usually went out for the sandwiches, on account she liked to get out and stretch her legs, y’know? But today she was expecting someone for lunch.”
“That was me. We had a date.”
“I know. Miss Gersh said you called. I was kinda hoping you’d volunteer it — fact is, we was just about to come looking for you, dude.”
“I didn’t do it.”
“Maybe not,” he conceded, working his gum with a hard tightening of his jaws. “But you look real good for it.”
“Please tell me the rest.”
“Before she left, Miss Gersh helped Miss Chu down so she could use the powder room before her date arrived. Before
you
arrived. Miss Gersh hung a sign on the door saying she’d be back in ten minutes. She left the door unlocked. Whoever did it worked fast. He was most likely watching the door for his chance. When he saw Miss Gersh split, he took it. Stuck her with a vintage bowie. The genuine article. Don’t appear to be any prints on it. It was wiped clean. No sign of forced entry at the front door. Someone knocked and Miss Chu let him in.”
“So it was someone she knew?”
“Pretty much had to be. Miss Gersh says she wouldn’t have let any customers in.”
“Did the surveillance camera record anything?”
He shook his head. “No tape in it. It’s just a monitor.”
The local TV news crews were showing up now, crowding the front door, barraging the cop there with questions. We stepped farther away from them.
“How did she get back up on the canvas?” I asked Very.
“Her killer put her up there.”
“Before or after he stabbed her?”
“After. We found blood in the middle of the room. We’re assuming it’s hers. Gotta check it.”
“Why did he do that — put her back up?”
He shrugged. “Make some kind of statement, maybe. Who the hell knows?”
“You’d have to be pretty strong to lift up a body like that, wouldn’t you?”
“About as strong as you’d have to be to toss Skitsy Held off of her terrace.”
“You think it’s the same person?”
“Don’t know, dude. I did get the lab test results on those clothes of hers we found.”
“And?”
“They had Wisk on ’em.”
“Wisk?”