Death in a Cold Hard Light Page 15

  “I threw it away,” he lied, and turned the truck into her driveway.

  Chapter Sixteen

  It was nearly midnight, and Margot St. John was afraid.

  She was often afraid in the old house sitting high on the Sconset bluff. Most of the neighboring places on Baxter Road were deserted in winter, when the little town’s population dove to a mere two hundred, and the wind tore relentlessly at the tips of the dune grass. Everywhere Margot looked, she saw blind windows, shuttered against the dark and the rain. She had turned out the lights in her own kitchen finally, a gesture of solidarity with the gale.

  Her arms were locked around her knees as she sat at the bare kitchen table, and her long hair fell across her shoulders like a shroud. From time to time, she tipped back a bottle of Jack Daniel’s and swallowed a mouthful of fire. Her birthday celebration.

  Two years ago, when she’d turned twenty, they had all gone out for dinner together in Cambridge. Katia had wanted to work late that night in her office at the Harvard Crimson—she was just a staffer then, but already fiercely dedicated—and Jay had carried her bodily away from her desk and out the door. Katia had refused to submit to such high-handed behavior, staying stiff as a board while Margot teased and Jay pushed her gamely through the darkened streets.

  “You love pasta,” Margot was insisting. “And it’s my birthday! The Crimson is a volunteer job, for God’s sake! You don’t have to make it your life—”

  On one street corner, where they stopped to rest Jay’s arms, was a knot of boys. Typical Cambridge boys—polyglot, multiracial, wearing hip-hop clothes and knit hats pulled down on their foreheads. One of them asked if they wanted to buy some smack. Margot had no idea what they meant; now, that vanished naiveté almost made her laugh aloud. Jay took Katia’s arm, and started to tug her purposefully toward the opposite corner, when suddenly she broke away.

  “How much?” she asked.

  “Thirty bucks.”

  “Let’s get out of here, Kate,” Jay said, taking her arm again.

  But she was already fishing in her purse.

  Later, standing in the restaurant doorway, he asked her—urgent, low-voiced, and worried—what the hell she had been doing. “If a cop had seen you, all of us would be in jail right now. You may not care about that yourself, but you should think about what it might do to your friends.”

  “I didn’t ask to come with you tonight.”

  He turned away, scowling.

  “There’s a story in this,” Katia insisted passionately, her blond hair sliding from behind one ear. “‘Heroin in Harvard’s midst.’ Do you realize how easy that was tonight? And those kids were maybe twelve. It’s urban crime on the edge of the Ivory Tower. That’s a story I’ve got to write. But I’ve got to find some students who are junkies, first.”

  “Are you out of your mind?” Jay demanded. “You can’t print that. You’d cause enormous problems for a lot of people who just want to destroy themselves in peace.”

  “Just watch me,” Katia said. With that crazy, distant light in her eyes. “It’s got nothing to do with you.”

  And from that day forward, all their lives had changed.

  Some of them had even ended.

  A sharp rap at the door jolted Margot out of reverie. She stood up, trembling uncontrollably, and stared down the length of dusky hall.

  Another knock, pounding this time, and the door shuddered. “Margot! Margot!”

  It was Owen Harley’s voice.

  Swallowing a sob, she ran to the door and pulled it open. “Owen! I tried to find you yesterday. You weren’t home.”

  He stepped inside and stood looking down at her, just as Owen always did, as though he were viewing her under a lens. “You’ve been drinking.”

  “It’s my birthday.” She tried to smile, and dissolved in tears instead.

  And for the first time in their unsteady acquaintance, Owen Harley reached out and took her in his arms. He stood awkwardly, his embrace wooden, and she derived very little comfort from his touch. She backed out of it as soon as possible.

  “I’ve got to talk to you, Margot,” he said tensely.

  She nodded and led him to the vast emptiness of the living room. There was a sofa there—a camelback, upholstered in a blue damask that had faded to the color of the house’s gray shingles. Margot’s narrow silk dress, a violent gold overlaid with green veins and bloodred poppies, looked impossibly brilliant against its bulk, as though she had disappeared into an early Matisse canvas.

  “Jay didn’t just drown.”

  She looked at him dully.

  “He was shot full of heroin when he went into the water.”

  She squeezed her eyes shut.

  “Margot, his arm had tracks on it! The police are asking all sorts of questions. They were over at my place today. Can’t you go home? Get off the island for a while?”

  She shook her head. “That’s ridiculous.”

  “It’s not, Margot. Believe me. You don’t want to be here when they find out that Jay was dating a woman who used … needles. It would be better for you. To leave. Trust me.”

  “I mean it’s ridiculous to say that Jay shot up before he died. He never would have.”

  “He must have.”

  She shook her head violently, her face filling with rage. “It’s a lie. A lie, Owen! To make his death seem tawdry and despicable. To drag him down to my—to make people dismiss it. But Jay didn’t use needles. He never would have. I know”

  Owen dropped to her side and placed his hands in supplication on her lap. His bearded face, ravaged by weather, had a terrible pleading in it. “That police detective had no reason to lie. Jay was shot full of something when he went into the water. You’ve got to get out, Margot. Please. For me.”

  “For you?” Her frown deepened. “Would it make you happy if I left, Owen?”

  “I’m never happy without you,” he said, with sudden appalling intensity. “Not in my boat, not in my bed—not even on the water. You’ve destroyed the deepest love I’ve ever known, my love for the sea. You’ve made me unquiet, Mar-got, and I’ll never go back again.”

  “Don’t, Owen—”

  “But I’d send you away in an instant, if I thought it could keep you safe. There’s something worse going on than either of us understand.”

  “There’s nothing worse than Jay’s death.”

  He gripped her knees harder, and she winced. “I want you out of it.”

  She stood up without a word and walked away from him, up the stairs to her bedroom. When she returned, she held a flat manila envelope in her hands, extended as with a peace offering. “He left this for you.”

  “What?”

  “Jay. Thursday afternoon, before he went to work. I was supposed to give it to you at our rehearsal session that night. I forgot.”

  He stared at the envelope, then took it and opened it. A square of paper, overlaid with the bars of a graph, slid into his hands.

  “Is it important?” Margot asked.

  “I have no idea.”

  “Maybe he was coming to talk to you about it. When he rode into the basin.”

  “Maybe he was,” Owen said dismissively, and stuffed the graph back into the envelope. “Will you go home, Margot? At least for a little while?”

  “That was the last thing he asked me to do for him,” she insisted. “And I failed.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  Paul Winslow was sitting at the lunch counter of Congdon’s Pharmacy on Main Street when he saw Will Starbuck walk through the door.

  The Christmas Strollers were out in force, and Congdon’s was mobbed, so that a regular customer like Paul had been forced to jockey for his bacon and eggs. A wall of bodies hid him from Will’s view for a moment. Paul huddled over his fork and kept his eyes on his coffee mug, hoping the moist heat and lack of floor space would discourage the other boy. Paul’s head was pounding, and when he reached for his coffee cup, his fingers shook. One booted foot maintained a restless tatoo against
the lower rail of his stool.

  “Paul.”

  He turned uneasily and met Will’s dark blue eyes. “Hey. What’s up?”

  “Not much. Didn’t get to talk to you yesterday.”

  “No. Too busy chasing a ball around a field.” Paul’s voice was more cutting than he had intended.

  “You were wicked good, Paul. Nobody this year can touch you.”

  Paul had quarterbacked last year’s superbowl game. Will hadn’t even played.

  “Yeah, well—that was last year, wasn’t it? I’m not a kid anymore.” Paul swallowed hard, his eyes flicking from his half-eaten eggs to his half-empty coffee cup. The mingled smells of frying food and wet sweaters were beginning to turn his stomach.

  Will ignored the sneer. He continued to stand next to Paul’s stool, one hand tucked in the pocket of his jeans jacket, the other still holding his keys. He eased closer to Paul every time somebody brushed past to pounce on an empty counter seat, and the nearness of his body was almost suffocating.

  “I figured you’d be out on the water today,” Will said, “but Jorie thought I’d find you here.”

  “Jorie? What’s Jorie know about my life?”

  “And here you are, keeping Congdon’s in business on Christmas Stroll weekend.”

  Paul closed his eyes and rested one hand against his forehead. It was beaded with sweat. “What do you want, Starbuck?”

  “Why aren’t you out making money, Winslow, instead of burning it on breakfast?”

  “Why does everybody think I’ve got to scallop every goddamn day?” Paul exploded. “Can’t a guy sit out a nor’easter anymore?”

  Will cocked an eye at Congdon’s plate-glass window. Beyond it, the damp cobblestones of Main Street shone like pewter in the freshly washed light. “Looks pretty sunny out there to me.”

  Paul half rose from his seat, wanting to slam the other boy’s complacent face; feeling the press of bodies around them, he sank back down. “There’s no money in scalloping anyway,” he muttered viciously. “I’m quitting as soon as I sell my boat.”

  “Really?” said Will. “I thought you loved that old tub.”

  Paul did not reply. A large woman in a bright yellow plastic slicker vacated the seat next to his, and Will slid into it.

  “Coffee, Milo,” he said to the short-order cook behind the counter. “And some two percent, please.”

  “Two percent! Like it matters!”

  “I’m not the person you should be pissed off with, Paul.”

  “Oh, go to hell.”

  Will accepted a coffee mug and a small pitcher of milk. Milo leaned across the counter and said conspiratorially, “You gotta order food, Starbuck. I can’t let you have the seat today unless you do. You didn’t even wait in line.”

  “Give me some toast.”

  “Dry,” Paul said, in a mincing tone. “No butter. He’s in training for the big time.”

  Will swiveled slightly to study his profile. “So tell me, Winslow, what’re you planning to do once you sell the boat?”

  Paul shrugged and shoved his half-eaten breakfast away. The nausea had a firm grip on his entrails now, and he couldn’t hide the shaking. Would Will notice? Would he understand it if he did?

  “You gonna go to the mainland? Try college? Or sell drugs up at the high school?”

  Paul’s head shot up, and the hands he had clenched around his coffee cup flexed dangerously. “What the hell does that mean?”

  “I hear you’re a real pro. Got the turkey tracks to prove it.”

  “Jorie’s been talking too much.”

  “Jorie’s pretty upset. I thought you should know that.”

  “I don’t really care.”

  “You ought to. But I guess you don’t care about much, right? Hurt your girlfriend, cut loose your old buddies, waste your cash on drugs while your business goes down the tubes—”

  Paul shoved at Will hard, all his anger in his shaking hands. Will landed in a sprawl at his neighbor’s feet.

  “Hey!” Milo barked with a shake of his spatula. “Watch that kinda action, Winslow, or you’re not coming back in here. You okay, Starbuck?”

  Will scrambled to his feet, menace in his dark blue eyes. “I’m fine. Give this guy my toast, okay? I think he could use it.” He reached across Paul for the keys he’d left on the counter. “And listen, Paul old buddy. Keep away from Jorie, understand? I won’t let you screw up her life. She deserves a lot better.”

  “Like you, for instance?” Paul jeered.

  But Will was already out the door.

  Merry Folger had also awakened early and walked through the weak sunshine into town. Her large and satisfying breakfast was consumed at the Fog Island Cafe, a mere block from the Water Street station; and so Will and Paul’s lunch-counter fracas went unnoticed by law enforcement.

  Merry planned to retrieve her car and drive out to Sconset in search of Margot St. John—but the girl was unlikely to be awake at eight A.M. And so, after tucking into poached eggs, black beans, and wheat toast, washed down with a flood of strong black coffee, Merry strode the short distance to her office and settled down to study Jay Santorski’s bank statements.

  Her desk was littered with copies of them. The originals had been sealed in plastic evidence bags, tagged as to their date and place of origin, and dropped in the evidence locker.

  In the last three months of his life, Santorski had deposited cash to the Pacific National Bank every Friday. One week the balance was increased by about four hundred dollars, and the next, by a little over six hundred, and so on.

  Merry picked up the phone and dialed Owen Harley’s number. To her surprise, he actually answered. After the usual civilities, she got directly to the point.

  “How much were you paying Jay Santorski?”

  “We had agreed to a flat fee of two hundred bucks a week. That’s not much, but nobody’s making money scalloping these days. I usually gross around five or six hundred a week, but gas and boat maintenance have to come out of that. And I pay a shucker to open the scallops before they’re shipped to New Bedford. That runs into some money.”

  Which meant Harley wasn’t doing much better than his dead mate. What did he live on? Merry wondered. Grant money from Woods Hole?

  “And Jay had his part-time job at the Mayhew House,” Harley added, breaking into her thoughts.

  “So he did. Thanks, Harley.”

  Merry already knew that Jay had made about two hundred dollars a week at Ezra’s. The two salaries combined accounted for his four-hundred-dollar deposits. But where had the extra two hundred come from, twice a month?

  His mother?

  Stolen tips from the Ezra Mayhew House?

  Or payments from Matt Bailey?

  Fred McIlhenney, Merry knew, had paid Joey Figuera three hundred dollars a week for almost a year. Next to that bill, Jay’s drain on the police discretionary funds would have been negligible. Bailey had got him cheap.

  “I’m sending the plastic bag to the state crime lab for fingahprint analysis, Marradith,” Clarence Stranger-field said from her doorway, “and the latex gloves. The forensic fellers may be able to lift some prints from the inside o’ the glove tips. The hypo and cassette I’ve dusted myself.”

  Merry looked up from the bank statements and smiled at the crime scene chief. “You sure hit the ground running. And?”

  “Wiped clean.”

  “That in itself is highly suspicious.”

  “I agree.”

  “How’d the autopsy go?”

  “I fainted three minutes aftah the butterfly incision.”

  “Poor Clare! Were they kind to you?”

  “Tolerahbly so. Waved some ammonia undah my nose. After that, I sat up and watched the rest of it. Poor young fellah,” Clarence’s basset-hound eyes looked mournfully at his shoes.

  “Nothing earth-shaking, when they opened him up?”

  “Not so’s I could tell. Some air in the lungs, so we know he went into the watah breathin’. Pathologist
says he died o’ respiratory collapse, plain as that. He’s sending a full repahrt along with the results o’ the bloodwork. We should have ‘em both in a couple o’ days.”

  “Thanks for going over. And for taking care of the plastic bag.”

  “Not a’tall. Where’d yah find it?”

  “It came from the harbor bottom.”

  “Sounds like the title of a Gahdzilla movie. Anything else yah need done?”

  Merry bit her lip and considered. “File the lifts, Clare, and send the hypo on to Boston with the gloves. I want the needle examined.”

  “For heroin residue?”

  “And blood. We should try to have the DNA scanned.”

  “I’m not sure there’s enough for that.”

  “We’ll never know if we don’t ask.”

  “You want a DNA sampling from Santorski’s body, too?”

  “Of course. What does the Chief say? You can’t take evidence from a body once it’s underground? Or something like that.”

  “He’s wrong.” Clarence grinned. “Yah can. This’ll mean delaying the corpse’s release for burial.”

  Merry grimaced. “I’d have remembered that minor detail when it was far too late. You’re dependable as a rainy day, Clare. Do you ever go home?”

  “For meals,” he replied with obvious complacency. “I’m ready to roll that cassette o’yahrs, Marradith, if yahr done with flatterin’ an old man. Got yahr tape recordah?”

  Merry pulled open her desk drawer. “It never leaves my side.”

  “Never mind the gloves. We know it was clean.” Clarence handed her the microcassette with a flourish. “I’ll let you do the honahs.”

  She dropped the tape into the recorder and pressed PLAY. “Let’s hope it’s not an anticlimax.”

  White noise. Then a beep. Then a man’s voice, offhand and harried. “Yo—I’m on my way over, but I’m gonna be a little late. See you in thirty.”

  “Answerin’ machine,” Clarence said conversationally. “I coulda put money on it.”

  Beep. White noise. A dial tone, strident and abruptly cutoff.

  “Someone who didn’t want to leave a message,” Merry murmured.