Murder on the Bluffs, page 12
“Chief Flaherty. Why he’s so interested in Mary?”
“He didn’t say. Maybe it was simply that we violated the crime scene. Or maybe she’s a suspect. But as I told him, it’s a public place. If they want to keep people away from it, they should guard it. Right?” I sipped my wine. “And then, as I was leaving, they brought Mr. Wojinski in for questioning. Chief wouldn’t tell me if he was a person of interest, but I’ll bet he is.”
Iris whistled. “No way he killed anybody.”
“You never know. He’s in pretty good shape, and he had a big beef with the Trustees. How do we know what was going on in his head?”
“You’re right, we don’t.” Iris nodded. “Anyway, lemme tell you about Mary. Lotsa gossip.” She grinned. “Long time ago, Walter Colby was sweet on her. Ooh, Charlie didn’t like that none. They fought, big-time.”
“Really? Did they get in trouble for fighting?”
“Sure. Charlie broke Colby’s nose. Sheesh. Then Walter’s father—he was a banker, too—he did something with the Heard lease on the Bluffs that didn’t go over so good with the Heard family. I never learned the details on that one.”
I marveled at Iris’s store of history. “Did Mary ever go out with Walter?”
“She did. Then she went away awhile. College, I guess. Or who knows, maybe she went away because she was pregnant.”
“No, really?”
“Could have happened. Both those men are Trustees, you know. Or were. Now they gotta replace Charlie.”
“Did Mary ever marry?” I sipped my wine again.
“Nope. I don’t know why not. She and Charlie shared the family house on the Bluffs. She’s still there, far as I know.”
“And what about you and Mr. Colby? Walter? You seemed pretty friendly the other day at the clam flat.” I nudged Iris with my elbow.
Iris blushed as she objected, “Hey, that’s my wine arm!” She held the glass out in front of her to steady it.
“Well?”
“I can have a date, right? He’s not married anymore.”
“It’s your life, sugar. Hope he treats you well. He’s a Trustee, as you said. I hope you can, well, trust him. He could have killed Charles easily.”
Iris opened her mouth to speak and then closed it. She pursed her lips as she gazed at me. “He could have. I don’t think he did. I’m a pretty good judge of character, you know.”
“Speaking of Trustees, what do you know about Dan Talbot’s father?” I asked. “Why did he move away?”
“Swish swish.” Iris sipped her wine and raised her eyebrows.
“Swish swish?”
“Why d’you think a man leaves his wife and kids and moves to San Francisco?”
I thought for a minute and shook my head. “Why?”
“Peter Talbot liked men, Lauren. Finally got honest with himself, way I see it, that he was gay. Good for him. Not so good for Danny.”
I sat with that news. Dan hadn’t seemed too pleased about his father’s exodus west. Maybe I could ask him about it again in the morning. Maybe I could bring up my own father’s sexual orientation. Or maybe not. That news still felt too fresh and raw to discuss with a stranger. Or even with Iris. I shifted on the bench.
“And his mom and grandma, they were really steamed. Did you know they are from Iran? And over there they really don’t like gays.”
“I heard him speaking Farsi in the dojo. But how did he get a name like Talbot?”
“That’s his father’s name. I can’t even pronounce his grandmother’s name.”
“So I’m going clamming with him tomorrow.” I raised my eyebrows at my friend. “You got me hooked.”
“I’m no matchmaker. But it sounds like a fun date.” Iris’s eyes sparkled.
“It’s not a date! I meant you got me hooked on clamming. I even picked up a fork already.”
“Since when isn’t going out with a tall handsome man early in the morning a date?”
“Since now.”
“And your Zac? What will he think about that?”
“Iris, it’s not a date. I just keep thinking about the taste of those fresh clams. And Dan asked if I wanted to go. That’s all.”
Iris sipped her wine and whistled. The sky turned rosy. “You gonna have good weather for your date.”
I rolled my eyes as I sipped my own drink.
“And, hey. You get tired of him, send him down the bakery. That guy’s cute.” She nodded in glee. “Maybe I cook him up some special buns.”
I snorted and whacked my friend with my free hand. I felt myself relax with the wine, carefree girlfriend time, the summery weather. I set my drink down and leaned against the bench back, my eyes on the increasingly spectacular sunset.
A tinny Zorba the Greek tune emitted from Iris’s belt. She unclipped her phone. “Probably Joey wondering where his dinner is.” She smiled. “Hallo?” The smile disappeared in an instant, replaced by a furrowed brow and worried eyes. “Yeah? Yeah?”
“What’s wrong?” I whispered.
Iris held up a forestalling hand. She bit out several more interrogatives, then said, “You sit tight, manari mou. I’ll be right there.” She disconnected the call and stared at me with a shadow clouding her eyes.
“What’s up with Joey?” I knew Joey—Iris’s “little lamb,” her manari mou—must be in trouble. “Is he all right?”
“Them friends of his. One of them was driving, he’d been smoking weed. Joey, he don’t do none of that. Lands in hot water anyway.”
I patted Iris’s hand. “Is he at the station?”
Iris nodded.
“Do you want me to come down there with you?”
“No. This happened once before. Last time they let the boys go with a warning. They know Joey’s no troublemaker. Those friends, they’re another story.” Iris shook her head, then rolled her eyes. She lifted her empty wineglass. “Now Mama the wino shows up. At least I’m not driving, but I’m not gonna make a great impression. You got any breath mints on you?”
• • •
“I have a surprise for you in the van. I’ll be back in a couple of minutes,” Dan said the next morning. A smile played on his lips as he winked at me.
I had been digging clams with Dan for over an hour under a cool overcast sky, belying the previous evening’s red sky. We’d chatted—“flirted” might have described it better—as we worked. My bucket was half full and my back was stiff, but the outing had been fun so far. I straightened and stretched my arms overhead.
“What kind of a surprise?”
“That wouldn’t make it much of a surprise, would it?” He dusted off his hands and strode away. He called over his shoulder, “Bee are bee.”
I stared after him, puzzled. Until I realized he was speaking text-talk. B-R-B: “Be right back.” I shook my head and leaned on the handle of the clam fork as I surveyed the flats. We worked alone in this spot. Dan had said this area, Rum Cove, wasn’t the premier flat, but it had a good yield and wasn’t as crowded as the Bluffs flat. I checked out the walk to his van, which looked like a toy at this distance. We’d moved down the flat quite a ways.
I pulled my phone out of my pocket. 6:30. The tide would come in soon. As I wondered about this surprise Dan was after, I resumed my search for clams. I didn’t want to go home with less than a full bucket. I mused about what Iris had told me about Dan’s father while I dug and wondered how Dan had dealt with it at the time. The sun poked out from the sky’s gray mask and spread over the flats.
The phone rang in my pocket, the ring tone a bad imitation of an old-style rotary telephone. I wiped my damp hand on my pants and retrieved the phone again. Iris’s number appeared on the display.
“Yo.” I had left Iris a message after I’d walked home last night but my friend had never returned the call.
“Lauren. It’s bad news. Joey?” Iris sounded on the verge of tears.
“What is it, fili mou? Didn’t they let him go?”
“No,” Iris wailed. “They said he was high, too. And they found drugs in his pocket, in his backpack. I can’t believe it. My baby.”
“Oh crap, Iris. He’s not locked up there, is he?”
“No, they let him go home with me. But we hadda pay some big money. He was actually arrested.”
“Girlfriend, I am so sorry. Did you open this morning?” I knew how much Joey helped his mother in the summer and on weekends.
“Yeah. Joey’s a wreck, though. Says somebody planted it on him. Says he never bought it, never woulda done that. What do I think, Lauren? What do I do?”
I spent a few minutes calming Iris down. I told her the name of a lawyer I’d heard was good, and assured Iris that her faith in her son was important whether he’d bought the drugs on his own or not. Iris hung up somewhat less agitated.
I picked up my fork and resumed digging. Why would Joey’s friends have planted drugs on him? Well, who knew why teenagers did what they did, for that matter. Part of me yearned to have children, and another part was horrified at the thought. They did, after all, turn into teenagers one way or another.
Ruminating as I dug, I gasped when Dan touched my shoulder. “Oh! I didn’t hear you come back.”
A smiling Dan held out a white box tied with string in one hand. “Breakfast?” He held a thermos and a paper bag in the other.
The growl from my stomach was perfectly timed.
Dan spread a red-and-blue Red Sox beach towel on the ground and sat. He waved me over to join him.
I sat and selected a chocolate cruller, a treat I allowed myself rarely, and sipped the coffee he poured into a foam cup.
“I heard your father was one of the few Trustees to resign rather than stay on the job until he died.” I gazed at the now incoming tide. “Why did he move to San Francisco?” Might as well play it innocent.
“He just decided he’d rather live out there.” Dan threw what remained of his coffee onto the sand with a violent thrust. “He had no business leaving the family. Deserting us.” He glared at me. “Why are you asking about my father, anyway?”
So that’s how he was dealing with being abandoned. This temper was a side of Dan Talbot I hadn’t seen before. It sounded like a lasting hurt was behind it. Rage was rage, though.
“It must be tough for you.” I flashed on Jackie, and how upset she still was about our own father’s absence, as was I. “There’s been a lot of talk about the Trustees lately with the school funding issues. You know, at Town Meeting. I was curious.”
Dan shook his head with force, as if to shake off the entire topic. “He’s gone, okay? He’s not part of this town anymore.”
“I hear you.” A cloud blew back over the sun and stayed there as if stuck with a cosmic magnet. “Hey, thanks for breakfast.” I checked my watch. “I should get home. Did you dig enough clams?”
Dan nodded. “Tide’s coming in, anyway.” His voice lost its edge, but he avoided my eyes.
We picked up our buckets and forks and started the trudge back to the van. I spotted the driftwood tree we’d passed on our way in. Its dark wood made it look like an ancient metal obstacle thrown down to block an invading army.
I walked in silence next to Dan. The so-called date took on a bitter flavor. I never minded silence, but this felt like an unsettled quiet with conflict lurking only a pace behind.
As we neared the stranded behemoth of a tree, I spied a piece of wood sticking up behind the far end. Straight and smooth, it didn’t look like a branch that belonged to the tree trunk. I didn’t remember seeing a pole there before. I glanced at Dan, but he walked with his eyes on the sand in front of him.
I slowed my pace as we passed the end of the tree. I looked back at the pole. I stopped and stared. I felt as if spring had never come, as if the cold of winter were in my bones. The piece of wood wasn’t a pole. It was the handle of a clam fork—and it looked like it was sticking out of Bobby Spirokis’s back.
Chapter Ten
I froze. I had to move, call for help. I forced my head around. Dan was now yards ahead of me, striding toward his van.
“Dan!” I croaked. He didn’t turn. He hadn’t heard me. I looked at Bobby again. Maybe he was alive. Maybe I could help him. I dropped my fork and bucket and ran toward the still form that lay by the giant driftwood.
Arriving at his side, I halted, gasping both for breath and at the sight close-up. The clam fork pierced Bobby’s left forearm. The sandy mud under it was a dark stain. Bobby lay facedown, his head turned toward the left. Blood dripped from a gash on his temple.
I thought I saw his nostrils move. I knelt next to his head to make sure. I laid my fingers gingerly on his neck. He was alive with shallow, quick breaths. At least he was alive. That left the more critical problem, the blood flowing from the wound on his arm. I didn’t want to remove the clam fork—that would probably make it bleed even more—and searched my memories of long-ago Girl Scout first aid lessons, coming up with the word tourniquet. Yes.
I ripped off my jacket. I tied it as tightly as I could around his arm right above the elbow. I wished I had a blanket or had worn more coats so I could cover him with something warm until help came. I had to call for help, and fast. A glance back at Dan confirmed that he was already at his van and couldn’t see me kneeling behind the driftwood. I felt in my pants pockets but didn’t find my cell phone. The jacket!
I gently maneuvered into the right pocket of the now-tourniquet jacket and drew out my phone. I stabbed 911 and reported the situation.
“Yes, he’s breathing, but it’s really light and rapid.” Would the ambulance arrive in time?
The dispatcher asked where I was.
“The Rum Cove clam flat. By a big piece of driftwood, a tree.”
“Cover him if you can and stay right there. Put me on speaker and keep the call connected.”
“I will. Please have them hurry.”
I pressed the speaker button and set the phone on the driftwood. I looked back the way we’d come. Who would have done this? And why hadn’t I noticed anyone else on the flats? Surely Bobby hadn’t been lying here stabbed all this time. I squatted and felt the skin of his cheek. It felt cooler than his neck had a few moments earlier. Hang the cold. I drew my hooded sweatshirt off and smoothed it over Bobby’s head and back. I rubbed his back in light gentle circles, repeating what Mom had murmured to me in decades previous: “You’re going to be all right. Hang in there. Everything’s going to be okay.” In the distance, a siren started up the incline of its pitch.
This must have been some fight, I thought. But with whom? I glanced at the sand. It was scuffed, but I couldn’t see any distinct footprints. I might have destroyed footprints with trying to help Bobby.
I’d seen him and Walter Colby argue downtown last week. Bobby had acted strangely the night of the murder and had been rude to me at the beach. Dan and Bobby had had some kind of run-in at the parade. A shudder ran through me, and not only because I wore only a T-shirt in the cool morning air. Dan had gone to the van for the pastries.
“What in hell?” Dan’s voice boomed behind me.
I yelped. I had thought Dan was far down the flats at his van.
Dan knelt beside me. “What happened to him?”
“I don’t know.” I shuddered, trying to pull myself together. “I called to you, but you didn’t hear me.” My tone was urgent. “Bobby’s alive. Just.”
Dan’s eyes scanned the fork, the blood, the motionless lobsterman on the sand. He shook his head. “Poor old Bobby. He had a tough life.”
I bristled. “He still has one and it’s getting tougher by the minute. Why don’t you hurry yourself back out to the road and direct the EMTs?”
• • •
I pulled on my sweatshirt. The siren faded as the ambulance carrying Bobby to the hospital sped away. An Ashford PD officer interviewed Dan several yards distant. The officer had already questioned me, taking notes of my responses. He’d seemed skeptical that I hadn’t seen Bobby or his attacker, but I told the truth about the morning. That was all I had.
I wrapped my arms around myself. I wished I were at home with my dog and a cup of hot chocolate. I couldn’t roust the picture of those rusted tines piercing Bobby’s arm out of my mind.
Another officer pushed stakes into the mud. He attached yellow crime scene tape to them and to the driftwood tree. He cast a glance at the tide that pushed its way ever closer and shrugged as he knelt and photographed the mud, the clam fork that now lay on the wet ground, the contours of the driftwood.
I jammed my chilled hands into my sweatshirt pockets. Watching the officer, I thought again of the hands that had wielded the wood handle of the fork. What had been their intention? Was the attack a sudden act, a welling up of violent passion, or had it been planned and executed to address a long-standing grievance? Had the person who lashed out at Bobby been intent on snuffing out his life, or did he or she mean to deliver a stern warning?
And then the practical questions took over. Would the police be able to identify the assaulter from some kind of evidence? Did fingerprints adhere to damp and splintery wood?
“Ready to go?” Dan’s deep voice was gruff. He touched my elbow.
I nodded and headed toward the road carrying only my bucket, because the police had wanted to examine our clam forks. My earlier fantasies about Dan had vanished. His angry reaction to the discussion of his gay father and his actions on the clam flats made me feel uneasy. He seemed unpredictable. This was not a trait I was interested in, in anyone, let alone a romantic prospect. I’d had no business flirting with him, anyway. I couldn’t wait to go home.
“Hey, wait up. I’m the one with the keys, remember?” His voice came from several paces behind me.
I sighed and slowed my pace.
“So what kind of questions did Officer Benny ask you?”
“Oh, you know.” I raised an eyebrow. “What happened, where we were, what I saw. The usual.”
“What did you tell him?” Dan gestured vaguely behind us.
I stopped short and turned my head sharply toward him. My tone was equally sharp. “I told him the truth. What did you tell him?”
