The Clam Bake Murder: A Windward Bay Mystery Page 3

  “And to be honest, I didn’t like him personally. He seemed so...single-minded. Not much of a sense of humor. What young Alice ever saw in him is beyond me. Maybe it was the out-of-town thing, the rancher thing; girls seem to go for that kind of cowboy bravado. I’m glad you’ve got more sense, Sylvia. I think you’re more like your Uncle Sean was—true to your roots.”

  “Maybe. Back to the condo venture: has there ever been any talk of him re-applying for permission? Like recently?”

  He looked out the front window, swilled the drink in his mouth, and swallowed. “What was that? Re-apply?”

  “Has Gordo re-applied for building permission?”

  “Um, as a matter of fact, there was something mentioned...”

  “About the condos?”

  He excused himself while he leant past me to brush a few stray wood shavings into the waste basket. He’d always been fussy like that. I glimpsed an unusual gum wrapper in the trash, one with orange and silver stripes. “Not sure if it was condos or not,” he said. “But Melissa Briggs said a land developer had been in touch with her—someone from Elysium Homes—asking about official channels, who the best person to speak to was. She gave him my number, but I haven’t heard from him.”

  “Was that recent?”

  “About a week ago, I’d say. Is any of this connected to what happened to Alice?”

  “Not sure. I’m just trying to get a background picture. It does strike me as odd that after all these years...”

  His grip tightened, squeaked on his moist glass. “Yes, it does seem strange. A week before Gordo returns to Windward.”

  I thanked him for his time and the Sarsaparilla, told him I’d be in touch if I found out anything more about Gordo. Then I decided to drive to Melissa Briggs’s place on the other side of town, hoping she might be able to shed some light on the mysterious land developer’s inquiry. The timing of it seemed a little too coincidental.

  On the way, I spotted Arlene Moreno, Ray’s mother, marching past the playground of John Paul Jones Elementary wearing tight leggings, high heels, and a green Vikings jersey. So I pulled in, scurried after her, tried my best to get her to stop so I could have a word.

  “Gonna have to walk with me, sweetheart,” she said. “I ain’t slowin’ down for no one. Those sumbitches, they got my Ray locked up, sayin’ he’s a suspect in your cousin’s murder. I aim to knock some sense into their dumb frickin’ heads. Ray told me what happened, what that psycho husband of hers done at the clam bake. He started it, right? The fightin’?”

  “Gordo started the fight, yes.”

  “Then he’s the one with murder’s rage in him, not my Ray. My Ray was with his friends all night—just ask em, any of em—then he come straight home, like he always done. Blows my mind they’d stoop to holdin’ him even a second with that psycho husband of hers on the run. Anyone with even half a tank of gas upstairs must see it for what it is. In case they can’t catch him that’s done it, they need a scapegoat. Even if he’s innocent. I seen it before. We all seen it before. Those sumbitch cops, they don’t care who goes down as long as they tie up the case. It’s that Warren Mattson. I’m telling you, he’s had it in for my Ray all along. Wouldn’t be surprised if they’re beatin’ a confession out of him right now while we’re walkin’ along. Those sumbitches. Those ass-covering goddamn Nazi sumbitches.”

  “Okay, well I won’t hold you up any longer,” I told her, already picturing the scene at the police station: Arlene at full pitch, the poor boys in blue almost turning blue for real as they held their breaths (and their tongues) and played civil, trying to placate her. Good luck there, boys!

  I didn’t know whether I believed her or not about Ray—a mother’s alibi was one of those sure things you’d be shocked if you didn’t get, like a band-aid in a kindergarten class—but I just didn’t buy him as the killer. Too much time had passed since he and Alice had split. Sure, he’d always been sore about it, but not that sore. If he’d wanted to kill her over it, he’d have done it around the time he really did go off the rails.

  Melissa Briggs wasn’t home, so I drove out to Alice’s place instead, not exactly sure what I’d find...if anything. I’d spent a lot of time there as a girl, playing with my cousin in the ginormous garden that reached almost to the water’s edge. And I’d visited often in the years since, mostly to take Uncle Sean’s old rowboat out around the bay. Rowing had always had a calming influence on me. Something in the rhythm and grace of the strokes, and the solitude of being alone on the water; it had become my church, in a way, the place I went to get perspective, to figure things out.

  When I reached the house, there was a yellow and black police cordon taped all the way around it. One look in through the window told me there’d been a helluva struggle in the living room: pictures and bottles and crockery were smashed, furniture overturned, splash stains (not dark enough to be blood) on one wall. It had all the tell-tale signs of a domestic humdinger. More evidence that Gordo had hit the deep end and let his tendency for violence spill over the top.

  If I’d had a gun right then and he’d walked into view, I’m not sure I could have stopped myself from pulling the trigger. That evil sonofabitch had taken my cousin. My best friend in the world growing up. Bit by bit, snide comment by snide comment, threat by threat, he’d dimmed her light and then he’d extinguished it.

  I stalked across the garden in a rage, went instinctively down the rocky steps to the jetty, ready for a much-needed escape in the rowboat. But it wasn’t there, tied up, where it had been each time I’d gone there for the past I-don’t-know-how-many years. Alice hadn’t set foot in a boat since her teens. So why wasn’t the boat there? Who had taken it out?

  My first thought was Gordo had taken it out to dump his wife’s body after he’d killed her in the house? But that didn’t gel. After all, her body had washed ashore. Everybody knew you had to weight a body down if you wanted to dispose of it that way.

  No, there was another explanation. There had to be.

  “Sylvia? Sylvia Blalock? You around?”

  I stood there for few moments, gazing out across the bay, trying to imagine what might have happened there last night, but nothing stuck. “Down here,” I answered Billy Langdale’s call. “On the jetty.”

  In truth, he was just the man I wanted to see. My perfect opportunity to gather all the facts of the case so far. Chief Mattson and Deputy Head-Cold weren’t going to let me sniff around, but Billy—well, Billy knew me better than pretty much anyone in Windward. He’d seen what I was like when I took things personally. More than that, he’d been on the receiving end a few times. So this time he’d know...

  I was not going to take no for answer.

  Chapter Three

  “Nice day for a sail, huh.” Pointing him to the empty berth, I cast a glum gaze. “Anything wrong with this picture?”

  Deputy Cherry Coke flipped through his notepad. “Um, the boat’s been found. Way over on Aylesbury Beach. Wind must have blown it right out, then the tide brought it back in.”

  “Have the forensics had a—”

  “Not yet,” he said. “We’re still waiting on that.” Glancing around to make sure we’re alone, he added, “Don’t tell anyone I told you that.”

  “Aw, that’s sweet. I felt like you were gonna say ‘Off the record’ or something. But you really haven’t told me anything.”

  He shrugged. “The Chief’s twitchy, that’s all, what with the Feds set to get involved. State Police he can handle, he says, but the Feds want things watertight. They’ll want to know who’s said what to whom and at what time, what volume, through how much booze. We’re just a small town. Nothing ever happens here.”

  “Except today.”

  “Except today. Did you know they’ve already raided Gordo McNair’s home in Kentucky?”

  “No, I didn’t.”

  “Yep. Busted right in and scared the bejesus out of his housekeeper.”

  “Did they find Gordo?”

  He shook his
head and opened his mouth to reply, but his chewing gum flew out. Almost cleared the boardwalk. After checking behind him again, he stepped across and nudged the gum into the water with his boot. It was then I noticed another of the colorful wrappers I’d seen in Del Brady’s trash basket, in among the reeds.

  “Can’t be too careful, huh,” I said.

  “No, ma’am. Not today.”

  “Ma’am? Since when am I ma’am?”

  “I meant Sylvia.” Boy, he really was on edge today. Chief Save-Ass had done a number on him, and I wasn’t certain I could use him as my inside source for much longer. Guy was red in the face, flustered like I hadn’t seen him since his ex-wife had turned up unannounced in the middle of football night at Kelly’s, the popular Irish pub on Lafayette. She’d completely schizzed out on him in front of his drinking buddies and most of his police colleagues, and had had to be escorted out by Jerry-Lee Kramer and a couple of others. I’d felt so sorry for Billy that night. It was as though his secret shame suddenly had a not-so-secret face—the kind of face you’d want to forget but never could, not after witnessing that palaver. It made me want to give him a hug in front of the whole bar, but I think that would have mortified him even more, poor guy. He always had been over-sensitive to what others thought of him.

  Me? Not so much. “Any chance you could let me into the house for a quick look-see? I’d know better than anyone if something’s missing or isn’t where it should be.”

  “What—this house?” He clawed at his scalp, punched out a frustrated ugh! “Aw, man, you’ve not listened to a word I’ve said, have you.”

  “I’m just trying to do the right thing for my cousin. You’re stuck doing the other thing.”

  He waved that notion away emphatically, seemed to have refound his center. “Don’t even go there, ma’am. I’m escorting you off the property.”

  “Oh?” I looked down at my feet, which weren’t moving. Neither were his. “Is this what being escorted feels like? I always imagined there’d be some physical contact involved.”

  “You’re asking for it, Sylvia.” When he fingered the cuffs hanging from his belt, I gave a sigh, figured the inside of a cell probably wasn’t the best place to conduct a private murder investigation. So I stormed off the jetty, leaving him with by blackest stink-eye, and, to make sure he wouldn’t catch up with me, sprinted up the steps and all the way to my car. He’d secretly be gutted to have angered me like that. And while I wasn’t really angry, I hoped he’d stew a little, rethink his behavior, so he’d be contrite, more amenable at out next meeting. Without Billy, I wouldn’t get to know any forensic details until the case was over. And that wasn’t good enough.

  I should probably ask him out, I thought, immediately cringing at how callous that sounded at this time and this place, and at how manipulative I’d become. How single-minded. I should ask him out...to apologize. Buy him a Cherry Coke. Hell, I’ve been wanting to ask him out for ages anyway. And the truth is...life’s too short to wait around.

  That last thought haunted me for pretty much the rest of the day. At home, I searched high and low for my A4 notebook, the one with all the recipe ideas in. I needed it so I could start jotting down my ideas on the case, to see if I could puzzle this thing out on my own. No dice. So I drove out to the all-night convenience store, bought a couple of new pads and some stick-it notes. That was when I bumped into Selectwoman Melissa Briggs, whom I’d tried to find earlier. She was there with her husband, Steven, shopping for some European liqueur I’d never heard of.

  After offering their condolences, they asked if I’d heard anything about Gordo. I wasted no time in singling Melissa out for a few questions of my own. It was late, but I was in that kind of a mood.

  “So, I spoke to Delano Brady earlier,” I told her, “asked if he knew anything about Gordo’s latest land development scheme. He said you had a prospective phone call recently, and that I should ask you about it.”

  She held her blank, surprised expression and blinked at me, but I could tell she was figuring out all the angles before deciding how best to reply. Melissa was in her late sixties, but she still looked good, trim, with an excellent complexion that didn’t need the makeup she applied so stylishly. You could clearly see she’d been a hottie once, and that she wanted her husband to go on seeing her that way. But she was no bimbo. Far from it. She’d been a Town Selectwoman for four decades, weathering all manner of change and expansion in Windward, and she’d always upheld her reputation for integrity, and for being the perennial “power behind the throne”, as some had said about her canny political moves.

  “Del said that?”

  “Uh-huh. He seemed to think you might know something more about it.”

  “That’s...odd.” She cast her husband a concerned look, then said to him, “Del Brady might be up to his old tricks again.”

  Steven, a good decade younger than Melissa, put down the potato chips multipack he’d been studying. “Why? What’s he done this time?”

  “He told Sylvia to quiz me on our mysterious caller—you know, the one from the other week, said he was from Ellesmere Homes.”

  “Oh, the property guy. Sure, I remember. You gave him Del’s number.”

  “That’s the one.”

  “So why’s he sent it back to us?” he asked, then immediately went pale. “You don’t think it has something to do with...” he lowered his voice, “you-know-what?”

  Melissa pensively tapped her jaw with a painted fingernail. “That’s what I’d like to know.” She turned to me. “Sorry, dear. It’s just that Del Brady and I haven’t seen eye to eye on anything lately. He’s been throwing his weight around in the Committee meetings, in ways I haven’t seen him do in a long time. Everyone’s a bit jittery. He even convinced us to hire an independent auditor to dig through our budget with a fine-toothed comb—five years’ worth of income and expenditure records. God only knows what he’s looking for. Always was a penny-pinching piece of work, but he hasn’t behaved like this since...let me see...no, I can’t remember when.

  “But he put you onto me for a reason. Tell me, did he mention land development, or did you?”

  “I did,” I tell her. “I’ve reason to believe Gordo McNair is—or was—about to submit another land development proposal. I think it’s why he came back to Windward. It’s probably the only reason he’d come back here.”

  “Well, I don’t know what his angle is this time, but it’s almost the same Committee that turned him down unanimously last time. Just one new member, I think, and she’s no lover of change, I can tell you that. Gordo must have something new up his sleeve.”

  “Who’s the new Committee member?”

  “Brenda Tyne. A tough old bird. Lived here all her life.”

  “Fair enough. I’m just trying to figure out why someone from Elysium Homes would contact you,” I said.

  “Elysium! That’s it. That’s what the man said. Silly me, I’ve been saying Ellesmere all this time.”

  “Oh?”

  “Age, dear. It’ll happen to you too someday.”

  “Did you tell Del Brady it was Ellesmere?”

  She thought for a moment. “I’m pretty sure—yes, I’ve said Ellesmere all along.”

  “I can vouch for that,” said Steven. “She chewed my ear off half the night moaning about that. Talk about déjà vu.”

  She playfully cocked her arm ready to punch him out. It was the cutest, girliest thing I’d ever seen Melissa do.

  “Then how did Del come up with Elysium?” I asked. That stopped the high-jinks dead.

  “Maybe it’s a well-known company,” Steven suggested.

  Melissa beat me to the reply. “Can’t be that well-known if none of us have heard of it.” We were silent for a while, then she said, “You know what? I’m going to look into this. Something doesn’t smell right here. And it isn’t just the cheese yogurt. I’m going to look into this, and then I’m going to give you a call, Sylvia, tell you what I’ve found out.”

  “Di
tto. Was about to say the same thing,” I told her. “In case you hadn’t noticed, I’m on a mission.”

  “Oh, we noticed,” said Steven, blatantly looking at his watch.

  “Okay. Sorry for keeping you so long.”

  “Nonsense,” said Melissa. “You take care now.”

  “You too.”

  I picked up some milk for breakfast and some Meow-Meow treats for Manuka, then headed for the checkout. It was there, in among the final impulse buy line-up, next to the Tic-Tacs and the cheap lighters and cigarettes, that I clocked NicoTime, the ubiquitous gum I’d seen lying around Windward in at least two suspicious locations. But it was no wonder I hadn’t recognised it. NicoTime was the kind of gum you chewed when you were trying to give up smoking. Nicotine gum.

  So I had another question for my (brand new) notepad: who in Windward had recently given up smoking?

  ###

  Billy Langdale agreed to meet me for a drink at Spinnaker’s the following afternoon. He’d pulled an all-nighter at the station, and at the end of a double shift, so Mattson had kindly given him the rest of the day off. The case was now officially a homicide investigation. Alice had suffered a severe head wound, which made everyone that much more determined to find Gordo. The State Police had brought divers in to search the bottom of the bay—mostly the south end so far—and we were both anxious to hear if they’d found anything. Or anyone.

  Billy, bless him, kept trying to veer our conversation away from the case, but there was literally nothing else I wanted to talk about. By the time we got refills on our Cherry Cokes, I’d pretty much laid out everything I had so far. And he’d clued in to the fact that, until I had closure on this thing, any time he spent with me was going to feel like a date with Miss Marple. Okay, a younger, gawkier, not-quite-as-bright version. But to his credit, he did a good job of pretending to listen, until I went off on a spirited tangent about whisking eggs and using butter instead of margarine, apropos of nothing. The poor guy had to start reading the ingredients on a nearby Ketchup bottle—upside down—before I cottoned on to his stupefied state.