There was no way I could talk to Eve for several days. She had returned to her home for the wake and funeral, and common courtesy dictated that she not be disturbed during this period of mourning. I would have to look elsewhere for information.
While I might understand Eve being driven to murder by the combination of a prenuptial agreement that virtually kept her a prisoner in her marriage and a philandering husband who abused her love, I really couldn’t imagine her setting fire to her own house, unless the house itself represented something ugly in her marriage. Perhaps she had wanted to vacation in Maine or Arizona or Paris and Ken wanted only to go to Fire Island, where he enjoyed being fire chief. Marriages, I have discovered, are strange relationships, iceberglike, with the great bulk out of sight.
Eve’s sister called to answer my question around dinner time.
“Eve wanted me to tell you,” Mary Ellen said, “that she looked around as best she could and as far as she could see, nothing was missing.”
“I appreciate your call. If nothing is missing, that certainly tells me it wasn’t robbery.”
“Did you really ever seriously consider that it was? A man lying in bed shot in the back of the head? It sounds like revenge to me.”
“Revenge for what?”
“I don’t have the slightest idea. Ken had a top position in his family’s business. Although I believe he was well liked, he could have angered any number of people.”
“Mary Ellen, when you and I talked yesterday, you told me that Ken had been involved with a young lawyer this summer.”
“And that she left Fire Island the beginning of August.”
“She’s in Blue Harbor right now.”
“She is?” The surprise in her voice sounded genuine.
“I saw her. She came for the Labor Day weekend and she’s staying—I don’t really know until when.”
“I’m surprised to hear that. I had a conversation with her myself the first weekend in August, after which she didn’t come back.”
“You talked to her?”
“I told her to leave my sister’s husband alone. It may not have been my business, but sometimes these things just get to be too much. I didn’t seek her out. I saw her and said my piece. When she didn’t come back, I thought that was the end.”
“I talked to her myself this afternoon. She said any rumors that she was having an intimate relationship with Ken were scurrilous. She said she was doing business with him. I assumed it was legal business. She’s an estate attorney.”
“Wills and things like that?”
“Yes.”
“Well, that’s ridiculous. Ken has every kind of attorney you could ever want. He doesn’t need to find one on the beach at Blue Harbor.” There was a derisive tone to her voice that told me how she felt more than her words did.
“Mary Ellen, I know that Eve signed a prenuptial agreement. Do you know if it was still in effect when Ken died?”
I heard her sigh. “She’s never told me they got rid of it.”
“Perhaps this lawyer, Dodie Murchison, was working on a new agreement that would eliminate the pre-nup. Maybe Ken didn’t want to deal with his regular lawyer on this to make sure it was kept private.”
“Lawyers aren’t supposed to talk about their clients’ business.”
“Maybe Ken felt something would get back to his father.”
“I see what you mean. Anything is possible, of course, but I’m convinced there was more than legal business going on between them.”
It occurred to me that we might both be right. Dodie could have been doing business with Ken and sleeping with him besides. “Perhaps that’s true,” I said. “I’d like to ask you one other thing. Did something happen in Ken’s life, perhaps a number of years ago, that might have burdened his conscience?”
She gave a quick laugh. “He cheated on my sister. It should have burdened his conscience.”
“What I mean is, could he have hurt someone else, outside his family, in such a way that he might have wanted to make amends?”
“You’re looking for someone he might have wanted to pay back.”
“Yes.”
“Well, I can see why he wouldn’t go to the family lawyer in a case like that. Offhand, I can’t think who that might be. Eve and I are close, but no one bares her deepest secrets, even to a sister. And if I don’t know, I don’t know who would.”
“One more thing. Does Eve like her house in Blue Harbor? Does she enjoy coming out here?”
“Interesting that you should ask that. Ken was the one who really loved Fire Island. I don’t mean to say that Eve disliked it. She has lots of friends here and my husband and I are here. She and Ken always took a winter vacation to some wonderful, warm place. But I think she would have preferred spending less time here and more time somewhere else. She mentioned Hawaii to me. She felt she hadn’t seen enough of Europe. She wanted to visit Hong Kong.”
So there might have been a motive to burn down the house. I thanked Mary Ellen and asked her to keep me informed in case anything turned up.
I talked to Jack about it while we had coffee on the deck facing the ocean.
“Your good-looking lawyer may have intentionally pointed you in the wrong direction by mentioning Buckley’s past indiscretions. To keep you from looking in the here-and-now.”
“That’s what occurred to me as Mary Ellen was talking. But you know, I just can’t quite see Dodie Murchison shooting Ken Buckley. She’s a young woman, an up-and-coming lawyer. There’d have to be a lot more at stake than a failed summer romance to risk a stiff jail sentence at the very least.”
“Maybe there was.”
“I think I should talk to her again, Jack.” I looked at my watch. “Now that I’ve heard what Mary Ellen Tyler has to say, I’ll be in a position of greater strength.”
“Go to it. I don’t mind getting back to my reading. Next week’s the beginning of the semester.”
And the end, I thought, of finding all the suspects conveniently assembled in a small area between the ocean and the bay. When the weekend came, they would all be returning to their permanent homes in and around New York City. “There are two other people I want to talk to,” I told him, “although they’ll probably have to wait till tomorrow. If I’m to find out what Buckley’s past transgressions were, Chief La Coste might know. He seems to know everything that’s happened in this town. And how about Curt Springer?”
“He’ll know if Buckley got into trouble and he was called. There may not be a paper trail on those incidents, though. These guys are good to each other. Someone calls up and says Buckley’s been drinking too much and is making an ass of himself and Springer comes along, calms everybody down, and gets Buckley home safely. No report, therefore it never happened. And even if there is paper, he may not show it to you.”
None of this surprised me. To some degree, it didn’t even bother me. Should there be a police report because a man drank too much and was loud? It wasn’t as if he hurt anyone, broke anything, or was planning to get in a car and drive somewhere. But it made my job more difficult.
“Springer may not be very well disposed to me, anyway,” I said. “I sounded pretty incredulous when he said he thought the motive was burglary.”
“I’m sure you’re not the only one with that reaction.”
I finished my coffee and gathered the dishes together. “Let me get a shirt to put on. It’s getting cool. I’ll take the bike.”
“You OK at night?”
I smiled. “You mean, do I think someone got off the ferry half an hour ago and is looking for a young mother without a dollar on her to rob? I’ll be fine.”
I took a quick swing by Chief La Coste’s house. There was only one light on in the section where the bedrooms were so I kept going. Dodie Murchison’s house had lights on in several rooms. I rang the bell.
“Chris Bennett,” she said, when she recognized me. “Find your killer yet?”
“Not yet, but I have a couple of questions.”
“Come in. I’m having a glass of brandy,” she said, as we went into the living room. “Join me?”
“I don’t think so, thanks.” I sat in a different chair from that afternoon. “I got a call from Mrs. Buckley’s sister a little while ago.” I wanted her to know I hadn’t initiated the conversation. “She said she talked to you about a month ago.”
“The Tyler woman? That conversation was like a bad soap opera. She accused me of having an affair with Ken and told me to stay away from her sister’s husband. It was rather childish.”
“I think she cares a great deal for her sister and didn’t want to see her hurt.”
“I wasn’t hurting her. I told you, my business with Ken Buckley was business.”
“I thought maybe that was the reason you didn’t come out here during August.”
“I was busy at work in August.”
“Did you see him during the Labor Day weekend?”
“I may have. I saw a lot of people over the weekend.”
“A few years ago, Ken had a summer romance with a girl who became pregnant. Did you know about that?”
“Ken never told me. I didn’t know.”
“I thought perhaps he wanted to make some kind of gift or bequest to her to apologize for rather boorish behavior on his part.”
“Boorish? Did he insist on an abortion when she got pregnant?”
“They both wanted an abortion. He ducked paying for it.”
“Well, I can’t help you. I know nothing about that, and anyway, women should insist on protection if they have casual sex.”
“I mention this because of what you said this afternoon, that Ken was haunted by something that happened in his past. I thought that might have been the incident.”
“If it was, he didn’t tell me about it.”
“Did he tell you anything that might lead to his killer?”
She took a sip of the brandy and rolled the snifter between her palms. “Chris, I would like to help you but I can’t. I don’t like the idea of a killer going free any more than you do. But what I learned from Ken is privileged and even if I told you what I know, I don’t know if it would help find his killer.”
“Ken and his wife signed a prenuptial agreement before they were married. Do you know if it’s still in effect?”
That stopped her. “How do you know about that?”
“Eve talked about it. Someone told me.”
“To my knowledge it was in existence at the time of his death.”
“Then he told you about it.”
“We discussed it, yes.”
“Did Ken sign any agreement that you prepared before he died?”
“He signed nothing.”
“Do you have something with you that he would have signed if he had lived?”
“You’re making this very difficult for me. We discussed something early in the summer. Ken died before any papers could be executed. I have no intention of carrying this discussion any further. These things happen. Without a signature, what he said to me is not legally binding. I’m not sending the family a bill for my services. It never happened.”
I thanked her and started for the door.
“I have a question,” she called after me.
I turned.
“The girl you saw running from the Buckley house during the fire. Do you know her name?”
“Tina Frisch.”
“She’s a grouper?”
“Yes. She’s living in the Kleins’ house, across from ours. It’s near the ocean.”
“Thank you.”
I left. Whatever Ken Buckley had meant to do, his killer had put an end to his intentions, good or bad. Perhaps that’s exactly what the killer meant to do.