Murder Takes to the Hills (7 page)

Mid-afternoon I graded us both
 
an A-Plus and headed home, feeling that between the two of us, the love of my life was in good hands.
 

Driving toward home, I realized that I had been so involved with Cindy’s problem I hadn’t seen Harmon, nor had I contacted Cassie about her possible trouble with the strange Pennsylvania customers.

I figured I should see her for some firsthand information and wondered if she were at the airport.
 
I pulled into the first parking spot I found on Commercial Street and fished around in the glove compartment until I actually found my cell phone. And Cassie, in fact, picked up her phone. Two rarities. I told her I was on my way to the airport if that suited her schedule. It did, and I carefully jammed the phone in my pocket.

I found Cassie in the hangar on a ladder, changing the oil in the port engine.

“Don’t you have a mechanic now to do things like that?” I asked.

“Hah! If you mean that sweet child Sonny sent out here, he doesn’t know the difference between a propeller and a dipstick. I forbade him to do anything other than check the air in the tires, and I wouldn’t rely on that. My dear, I love your outfit, and I’m sure Cindy does.” Her eyebrows curved upward and her mouth curled in a sarcastic angle.

“Uh, yeah. I have some dirty yard chores this afternoon,” I fibbed.
 
“Have you heard any more from the three Pittsburgh pirates?” I opened a small refrigerator and took out a can of Budweiser. “You want one?”

“Yes to the pirates and no to the beer. Get me a Snapple iced tea. I’m flying tomorrow morning.”

I knew she maintained a strict no-drinking-for-twenty-four-hours-before-a-flight rule, so as I handed her the tea, I waved the can of Bud. “This going to bother you?”

“No,” she lied, looking wistful, so I was noble and took a bottle of tea instead.

“The pirates seem okay,” she remarked as she climbed down the ladder and motioned us to her tiny office in a corner of the building. “The men belong to some veterans club in this little town near Pittsburgh. And they are having a big benefit dinner to raise money for a new clubhouse. They figure everyone is sick of hamburgers and hot dogs or spaghetti and meatballs, so they thought up a shore dinner. They figure they’ll get maybe four hundred people instead of two hundred by advertising something new and different. So they came out here to line up the food.”

“Why here and why in person? Wouldn’t a phone call to a Boston or even a Pittsburgh wholesaler have been easier?”

“Sure.” Cassie laughed. “But this guy Frank loves an excuse to fly and he’s got a nice four-
seater
Cessna, so they piled in it and headed east. And before you ask, why
Ptown
…one of the men was here with his wife last summer and had a delicious lobster dinner. Are you getting the picture…three little boys off on a lark.”

An ashtray on the rickety table between us told me I could smoke, so I pulled one out. Cassie lifted it from my fingers, so I pulled out another and lit both. “I thought you were quitting,” I mentioned casually.

“Uh, not really, but my pack is out in the car. I smoke less if I have to take time to go get them. It kind of keeps
Lainey
off my case.”

And mine were right here, handy. Sometimes I think I supply the entire eastern seaboard of non-smokers, wannabe non-smokers and occasional smokers. I wished I had taken the beer. I wished I had stock in whoever makes Virginia Slims. But I got back to the reason for my visit. “Wasn’t there something about renting your plane, and landing in the dark in an unlit cornfield?”

“My God! What is Harmon spreading around? Yes, Frank wanted to rent the plane and fly it himself.
 
It would be a bit cheaper for them, but I think he really would just like to fly it. He’s licensed for twin engine and checked out in a plane like mine. However, I told him: where my plane goes, I go. They want the seafood to arrive just before or just after dawn, so the cooks can start cooking in the morning and be ready to serve by noon. Frank has his own little grass strip on his farm with limited lights. It’s plenty long enough and nice and smooth, he says. The lighting is more or less adequate, especially with someone on board who knows the approach. For heaven’s sake there’s no mystery about this.”

I took a drag on my cigarette. I was beginning to feel foolish. “So you think it’s all aboveboard? That Frank was being truthful?”

“Alex,” her voice was heavy with patience. “The man is hardly going to ask me to land a plane in some dark, rutted field where I’m going crash and kill him and his two friends, and make chowder out of all his seafood.”

“Yeah, I guess not. Did Officer Hatcher overhear any of this?”

She took another cigarette. “Yes, every word, while he tried to look busy with the tire gauge. He also thought everything sounded legit. We agreed they were all ignorant about seafood—they thought you cook scallops in their shells—but that Frank was knowledgeable about planes. Okay?”

“I reckon. It just sounded kind of funny the way I heard it. When is this great shipment taking place, and where are they getting all that seafood?”

“In about three weeks. They’re going to firm up the date next week so I can lock in my schedule.
 
I gave them the address of Cape End Wholesalers here, and Phil
Pino’s
phone down in Wellfleet. If he doesn’t have all the scallops they want, I guess he can get them. Satisfied, mother?”

“Just trying to be helpful,” I said, somewhat miffed.

“I know,
darlin
’, and I love you for it. Seriously, you look tired, Alex. Have you and your lady thought of grabbing a few fun-filled days somewhere before the season really starts?”

“Yeah, yeah.”

I tossed my tea bottle into the recycling bin and went on my way.

At home I buried my hockey T-shirt into my catchall bureau drawer where Cindy never goes and put on a
sloganless
tan one. Knowing there were no twenty-four hour drinking rules before going to the supermarket tomorrow, I snagged a cold Bud and bid good-day to the departing Orrick Philharmonic as I hit the deck chair for the still-warm rays of sun.

CHAPTER SEVEN

My wardrobe was running thin on clothing to make me look appreciably different when I went out on my patrol to check up on Edgar, and keep an eye out for the stalker as well. Edgar had been in place for nearly a week now, and I didn’t check up all day every day as I had at the beginning. But I did go out once most every day.

He had reported to Sonny as of yesterday that he had spotted no one showing unusual interest in Cindy. I wanted to make sure he was doing all he should before we began to wonder if somehow Cindy had imagined her follower. I found that solution hard to accept, anyway. Cindy is not afraid of men as such. Indeed, she gets along well with most men and likes them, gay or straight.

And she is not imaginative when it comes to fancying rapists under the bed or kidnappers lurking in the shrubbery. Something had frightened her and I had no doubt it was real. We had been careful not to spread word of her problem around. Not even Mom and Aunt Mae knew. I hadn’t even told Cassie, and I certainly hadn’t told Peter and the Wolf…our two good friends who ran a B&B which catered—in every sense of the word—to gay men. Peter’s first name really was Peter, and Wolf’s last name was Wolf—someone coined the sobriquet and it stuck.

So, I needed a new disguise. I had a brilliant thought. I went outdoors and asked one of Orrick’s electricians, who was about my size, if he had an extra pair of coveralls in his van. He allowed as how he did, having picked up his laundry only yesterday.

I asked if I could borrow a pair, assuring him I would have them laundered and back in place tomorrow. Puzzled but agreeable, he went to his van and pulled out a pair with one or
two paint spatters, a varnish stain and one knee worn through. Perfect.

Standing in the yard of the courthouse, along with several other idlers, I realized I must have misjudged the height of the coveralls’ owner. Both the legs and arms were too long, and I had to cuff them both twice to get them the length they should be for me. They looked a bit clumsy, but I was sure that, accessorized by old sneakers, white work socks, my Red Sox cap and a pair of wire-frame glasses with clear glass lenses, no one would recognize me.

I lazily watched Cindy disappear into the health food store for some lunch hour shopping, while Edgar sauntered across the street to admire the window décor of The Catch fishing tackle mart. I was taking a sip of my lukewarm soda when peals of girlish laughter drifted across the grass to me.

Looking up, I saw my mother and Aunt Mae, collapsed against each other and pointing at me with great delight. I could cheerfully have strangled them both, but I managed to shake my head and to mouth the words, “I don’t know you.”
 
They looked confused, but at least stopped their sophomoric act, as I walked over to them. I loudly gave them directions on how to get to a restaurant near the Wharf Rat, along with many gestures, and then muttered, “Go to the Rat. I’ll meet you shortly.” Chastened, they hurried away, and I sauntered to my car.

There, I wiggled out of my failed costume, tossing it and my cap and glasses into the backseat and revealing the jeans and shirt I had fortunately worn underneath.
 
I may have looked a little sweaty and disheveled, but at least I was me again—if indeed I had ever been anyone else.

As I approached their table at the Rat, both women looked quite relieved to see me in something like normal garb and began simultaneously to babble apologies for blowing my cover. I had no choice, of course, but to tell them what was going on and why. Over my beer and their white wine and salads, we sorted it all out, apologies were accepted and we all returned to something like normal.

Both women were naturally concerned for Cindy and outraged at whoever was causing her, and peripherally me, such distress. Both my mother and my aunt had been widowed young, but under very different circumstances. Aunt Mae’s husband had died in his late forties of a sudden cerebral hemorrhage. Aunt Mae had never remarried, being unable to find a man she considered even half as wonderful as Uncle Frank had been. She began raising herbs to fill some of the painfully empty time, and became so good at it, she now had a large herb garden and had converted her garage into a small but well-known shop where she sold both dried and potted herbs in season. She had even published two little books on the subject, and actually sold a fair number of them.

 
Mom’s widowhood came along much more dramatically. My father died when I was twelve and Sonny fourteen, which would have put Mom at about thirty-seven or -eight. As I remember him, my father was a heavy drinker and not a merry one. Although he never abused any of us physically, he was sarcastic, critical and withdrawn. He hated his job.
 
Although he was good at it, he always left the impression that he was much too intelligent to be manager of the local supermarket and that somehow Mom, Sonny and I had entrapped him there.

The summer that changed our lives for the worse and then for the better, had Provincetown sideswiped by a powerful hurricane. Dad had closed the market early, seen to it that the large glass windows were covered with plywood, that the generator was set up to kick in if—when—the power failed, etc. He then visited his favorite bar and fortified himself and finally came home, angry at the many inconveniences he had suffered already that day.

By then Mom had pulled her car into the garage, and the three of us had dragged the outdoor furniture into the basement and closed any windows, doors and attic vents we could find. We had just gathered all the candles in the house when Dad drove into the yard, obviously and vocally pissed that he had to get out and re-open the garage door in the pouring rain.

The night was a horror. Dad blew a gasket when he found that dinner consisted of do-it-yourself cold sandwiches. Mom was worn out from helping move all the furniture, and making the house as secure as possible; hot food was out of the picture anyway, as the power had long since failed. Dad retired to the den and sat in front of a black TV screen with his scotch.

Mom, Sonny and I sat in the kitchen, listening to sounds we did not realize the house could make and survive. The building that was always so cozy in winter now presented us with chill drafts it had never before allowed to enter. The rain sounded like people throwing rocks at the windows, and we were sure they must break and let the rocks fly in to hurt us. There were unidentified crashes from time to time: Trees? Utility poles? Objects sailing into other objects riding a demon wind? The dark was palpable with no lights in the house or on the street. And the candles provided a few little islands of yellow that brought no comfort.