“How would you describe the nature of your relationship with Dr. McLeary?” I asked again.
Clay settled back on the creaking leather couch, cupping the glass of scotch with both hands. “I believe my wife just admitted that we have enthusiastically supported Maeve’s work, as star-crossed as it might be.”
“May I ask why you chose to remain anonymous?” Stacey said, unable to help herself.
Alyce bent her knees beneath her as she settled in beside her husband on the sofa. “You don’t hold back your opinions. Do you, Stacey?”
“My parents raised me to speak my mind. It’s a blessing and a curse, frankly.”
Markham tugged on one of his earlobes. “I support every cause I donate to anonymously to discourage those beggars I mentioned.”
“But you were a major donor to the Maine Seabird Initiative,” I said.
“Yes, we were,” said Alyce.
“Is that why Dr. McLeary came to Ayers Island yesterday, to speak with you about upping your annual gift?”
Clay Markham leaned across the table, grinning an impish grin. “Now how did you know Maeve was here yesterday? Which of the cottagers told you? It was that troublemaker Speer, wasn’t it?”
A bead of perspiration rolled down the side of my glass and dropped onto my knee. “Why do you say that?”
“He’s always up to some mischief. You know the tale of the sorcerer’s apprentice? That’s Justin Speer. Mickey Mouse facing an army of brooms.”
Alyce cleared her throat.
“Justin knows what I think of him,” said Markham.
“Which is what?” I asked.
“That I admire his ambition more than his talent.”
“Maeve was here briefly,” said Alyce now with something like boredom. “She arrived just after Clay and I had returned from a morning sail around Monhegan. We invited her on board the Fūjin—”
“That’s the name of your schooner?”
She barely nodded. “We invited her on board the Fūjin to speak privately. From the start, I could see she was agitated even beyond her usual frenetic presence. She’d come here to ask for the moon.”
“You didn’t come up to the house for this conversation?” I said.
“No,” said Clay, looking me straight in the eyes again. “We sat on the sailboat and drank iced tea and listened while she made her ask.”
“I saw her walk past the house on her way up the hill,” Brenna Speer had said.
Stacey had no patience for the gamesmanship of interviewing. “Did she say why she needed the money?”
Alyce rattled the ice around her glass. “She respects our intelligence enough to be frank and not attempt to mislead us. She said another of her major donors had recently died, and the heirs had no interest in environmentalism. In turn, we informed her that we’d already decided to decrease our donation. Maeve has been required to disclose in her annual reports that the puffins aren’t reproducing the way they once did, and there comes a point where even we Markhams won’t throw good money after bad.”
Behind them the sky had grown so dark that, except for the occasional sweeping flashes from the lighthouse, the windows had become mirrors, reflecting the room.
“Don’t suppose for one minute it was easy for us,” Markham said. “Maeve’s always been so passionate about the birds, and we could see she was at her wit’s end. The puffins are her whole life.”
“She made it worse, I have to say, by refusing to take no for an answer,” added Alyce dryly. “Persistence isn’t a virtue when it becomes bullheadedness.”
“We were heartbroken for her,” said Markham. “Genuinely heartbroken.”
Clay Markham had wanted to give Maeve McLeary the money. It had been Alyce who had refused. And from what I had learned about Mrs. Markham tonight, she hadn’t wasted time doing it.
“It sounds like a short conversation,” I said.
“I wouldn’t call an hour short,” said Alyce. “We let her make her arguments and counterarguments. We owed her that much. But at a certain point, you need to come out with a firm no. We wished her luck and said our goodbyes, and then Clay and I came up to the house. That was the last we saw of her. Isn’t that right, dear?”
Markham spoke definitively. “It is.”
“You didn’t think it was strange that she stuck around the island all day after having her plea refused?” Stacey said.
This time I didn’t mind her showing our ace in the hole. The time was right to challenge them.
“I am not following you,” said Markham.
“The front of the house has a view of the channel,” I said. “You must have noticed the Selkie anchored there. You didn’t wonder why she didn’t immediately depart for Baker Island?”
Alyce’s mouth tightened until her lips disappeared. She set her drink down on a cork coaster. Only then did she speak. “You knew she was here all day, and you let us talk ourselves into a net. So much for hospitality being rewarded.”
“I’m disappointed in you, young lady,” said Markham, as if he was accustomed to law enforcement officers being dissemblers.
“There’s something else they’ve been hiding from you,” said Ridge’s voice from the hallway. Somehow he’d crept up on the room without making a sound. He’d even known where to stand so his reflection wouldn’t show in the plate windows. “Maeve McLeary killed herself this afternoon.”
“Maeve? Dead?” Clay Markham sloshed his drink over his pants as he stood up.
“Is this true?” said Alyce. “You’ve been concealing her death from us since you arrived?”
I saw no advantage in denying it. “How did you find out, Derrick?”
Ridge stepped forward. “Does it matter?”
Markham flushed with outrage. “She was our friend!”
“Mine, too,” said Stacey. But her words might as well have been uttered into a void.
“I wasn’t trying to mislead you about her,” I said, slipping into another easy lie. “But we’re not allowed to talk about suicides before the next of kin has been notified.”
“Oh, please,” said Alyce.
Clay Markham had finally noticed the scotch on his pants and was trying ineffectually to brush off the stains. “How did she do it? Can you at least tell us that?”
“She weighed her backpack down with stones and drowned herself,” said Ridge, revealing that his source was well-placed indeed. “Warden Bowditch himself tried to save her, but it was too late.”
Markham sent daggers flying at me, one after the next. “Is that true?”
“Yes, sir. It is. Sergeant Klesko assisted me, but as Derrick said, we were unable to resuscitate Dr. McLeary. I’m sorry for the loss of your friend.”
Alyce Markham hadn’t budged from the couch. “Drowning herself with stones—I always said Maeve had a flair for the melodramatic.”
“You didn’t like her.” Stacey made no attempt to hide her disdain.
“I wouldn’t go that far,” said Alyce. “She was a strong, intelligent woman with a fantastic sense of humor. That said, she also effectively bilked us out of hundreds of thousands of dollars.”
As eulogies went, this one seemed short of warmth. Icy seemed the apt word.
“Bilked?” said Markham, his voice rising. “We gave her that money of our own accord.”
“Would you like me to fetch you a change of trousers, Clay?” said Derrick Ridge.
“I can change my own damned pants!” He made another half-hearted brushing motion over his wet crotch. “Alyce, I want you to be kind to this girl while I’m upstairs. She suffered a grievous blow today. And however disrespectfully he’s treated us, it sounds like the warden behaved heroically, trying to save Maeve’s life. Let’s treat our guests with courtesy even if they don’t deserve it.”
“When have I ever been less than courteous to a guest?”
“I can think of a recent occasion!”
He means yesterday onboard their schooner, I thought.
Ridge trailed behind his master.
Alyce returned to the bar to mix herself another gin and tonic. “I suppose you were also lying about us not being suspects.”
“I haven’t lied to you, Mrs. Markham. I withheld information. And in my capacity as a warden investigator, my job isn’t to keep a list of suspects.”
“You’ve lied by omission. My husband refuses to learn life lessons, but I should have known better. As I said earlier, you’re not the first police officer to sit in that seat.” She set down the green bottle of gin. “I gather you believe that one or more of our island’s residents murdered those researchers. Am I correct?”
“The detectives haven’t ruled anyone out.”
“Including my husband and myself? So they do consider us to be suspects. May I at least request, Warden, that you inform the real detectives of our diminished physical capacity? Clay has had open-heart surgery and received a pacemaker, and I’m overdue for a hip replacement, if you haven’t noticed my graceful gait.”
The room became quiet enough that I could hear the sea through the windows.
Alyce finished her second drink in several long gulps. She dumped the ice cubes into the sink and ran water to rinse the glass. She started to reach below the zinc countertop, then caught herself and set the glass upside down on a green towel for drying.
I was waiting for her to tell us to leave her home.
Visibly uncomfortable, Stacey stared intently at the landscaper’s map of Ayers Island on the coffee table. She wasn’t just distracting herself. I could tell she was seeing something new in the old chart.
“If you’re so interested in history,” said Alyce with no particular kindness, “we have a room down the hall with antique photographs, town records, and artifacts from the Hatchet Island Granite Company.”
Stacey looked up from the map, eyes widening. “You and Maeve McLeary were the same.”
Alyce Markham blinked as if she’d been slapped. “Excuse me?”
“You both wanted to restore an island to its former self.”
“That’s absurd! I’m not some silly dreamer. I didn’t kidnap puffins from Labrador!”
“You both had grand visions,” Stacey said. “You had more in common than you realize.”
“Is that so?” Alyce hobbled out from behind the bar. “The fact that I personally paid for the work we’ve had done doesn’t count? It doesn’t matter that I nevered duped wealthy donors into thinking I was an environmental visionary?”
“Maeve McLeary was my mentor, Alyce,” said Stacey. “To me, she will always be a visionary. I don’t fully understand what your dream is for Ayers Island, Alyce, but I respect that it’s based on a heartfelt sense of purpose.”
“Please address me as Mrs. Markham. Clay may be fine with phony casualness, but I am not.” She stalked on her bad hip toward the hall. “I’m going to leave you charming people alone while I check on dinner.”
The beam from the lighthouse swept the windows again.
“That could have gone better,” Stacey said.
I couldn’t help but smile. “I found it revealing.”
“My mouth always gets me into trouble. Next time, you should put a gag on me.”
“Never,” I said. “You might not know it, but you got them to reveal things I never could have.”
“Like what?”
“Clay Markham is one hell of an actor.”