The lights of the Town House Lounge and Café spilled out onto Main Street. McGuire entered the tavern and seated himself in the same spot as the previous night. The bar was crowded and noisy, the rumble of conversation punctuated by shouts and laughter from patrons gathered around the three dart boards at the rear. The television set above the bar was on but no one seemed to be paying attention to it.
“I had a good bowl of chowder and a cold Molson’s here last night,” McGuire said when the bartender placed a coaster in front of him.
“So?”
“I want the same thing again.”
Fifteen minutes later he was scooping the last of the chowder from the bowl and preparing to order another Molson’s when a hand gripped his shoulder from behind and a beery breath flooded the air around him.
“The hell you doin’ in here alone?”
McGuire turned to look into the slightly crossed eyes of Parker Leedale. The lawyer wore a heavy red sweatshirt and green cotton chinos. He gripped two darts in his free hand.
“Dinner,” McGuire answered, nodding at the empty bowl.
The explanation seemed to satisfy Leedale. “Come on back, join the guys,” he said, pointing toward the back of the room where Mike Gilroy and Blake Stevenson stood next to one of the dart boards, watching in silence. Gilroy raised an arm and waved at McGuire, who smiled tightly and nodded. “The ball game got rained out, so we started a darts tournament. Come on,” Leedale almost pleaded. “Have a beer with us. We got a booth at the back.” He seized the empty Molson’s bottle and held it to the light. “Jimmy!” he called to the bartender. “Another one of these on my tab, okay?”
Gilroy and Stevenson abandoned the darts game when Leedale and McGuire arrived at the booth. McGuire nodded to the other two men and slid in against the wall, Parker Leedale next to him. Mike Gilroy and Blake Stevenson settled themselves across from them, Stevenson on the outside to afford room for his massive bulk.
“I’m still two up on you guys,” Gilroy grinned at the others. He was noticeably sober compared with Leedale and Stevenson. “You owe me two bucks each.”
“Gotta be careful, talking about gambling in front of a police officer,” Leedale slurred, withdrawing two crumpled bills from his pocket and dropping them on the counter. Blake Stevenson peeled money from an alligator-skin wallet and spread the bills neatly in front of Gilroy without comment.
“So how’s the house look?” Leedale asked McGuire. “Everything copacetic?”
“Everything’s fine,” McGuire answered. The waiter arrived with McGuire’s Molson’s, a Scotch and soda for Stevenson, draft beer for Leedale and a mineral water for Gilroy.
“Designated driver,” Gilroy said, hoisting his drink as though proposing a toast.
“Designated horseshit,” Leedale grumbled. He took a long sip from his beer, staring over the rim at McGuire. “I remember you,” he said, “when we were kids, maybe eleven, twelve. You spent a couple of summers here with Terry. You stayed at the house, Cora’s house.”
McGuire nodded.
“We played some baseball, down at the park where Miner’s Lane runs into Mill Pond. Terry pitched, of course. I played second base usually. I think you were out in left field.”
“Usually was,” agreed McGuire.
“Now there was a loss,” Blake Stevenson said, shaking his head. “If Terry Godwin had lived, he would be one of the great success stories of this area by now.”
“Probably been a politician,” Mike Gilroy offered. “Would’ve gone into politics for sure.”
“How well did you know him?” McGuire asked.
“He was my quarterback,” Stevenson declared, shifting his weight and crossing his legs. “In high school. I was a guard. Varsity team.”
“Hell of an athlete,” Gilroy said, nodding.
“Shit, everybody knew Terry,” Leedale almost sneered. “BMOC.”
“Mister everything,” Gilroy agreed.
“Terry Godwin,” Stevenson proclaimed in a voice meant to be the final word on the topic, “was perhaps the best all-around student and athlete produced by CDHS.”
“Who?” McGuire asked.
“Compton District High School,” Leedale explained. “We all went there. These guys, Ellie, June. We’re still close.”
“Hear you might be selling your aunt’s house,” Mike Gilroy said.
McGuire nodded.
“Sam Hannaford get to you about the survey he needed?” Parker Leedale asked.
Another nod.
“You sticking around until the place is sold?” Gilroy asked.
McGuire swept the eyes of all three men with his gaze. Poke ’em with a stick, Ollie had said. See who yelps the loudest. Instead of answering Gilroy, McGuire said, “Did Terry know a woman named Sanders?”
“Who?” Parker Leedale asked.
McGuire winced and sat back out of range of Leedale’s sour breath. “Sanders. She died about thirty years ago. It looked like murder and the police talked to somebody who did gardening around her house, maybe Terry. . . .”
“No, no, it was Sonny Tate,” blurted Stevenson.
“The woman over on Nickerson’s Neck,” Mike Gilroy said almost at the same instant.
“Oh, shit, her,” Parker Leedale said. He stared down at the table, a small smile frozen in place.
“How do you know about her?” Gilroy asked.
“Cora told me,” McGuire lied. “She left something for me to read about the murder.” He looked across at Stevenson. “Who’d you mention just now? Somebody named Tate?”
“Sonny,” Mike Gilroy said. “He killed her.”
“What happened to him?” McGuire asked.
Gilroy shrugged.
“Jesus Christ,” Parker Leedale said, his grin wider now. “Sonny Tate. Haven’t thought about him in years.”
“He got away with murder,” Blake Stevenson said solemnly.
“What, he was acquitted at a trial?” McGuire said.
Mike Gilroy shook his head. “There was no trial.” He shrugged his shoulders. “He just got away with it.”
“But Terry Godwin wasn’t involved,” added Blake Stevenson.
“Wasn’t even a suspect,” added Gilroy.
“Sonny Tate,” mumbled Parker Leedale. “Now there was a guy.”
McGuire drained his glass of beer. “So tell me about him,” he said. “Who’s Sonny Tate? And how’d he get away with murder if you guys all know about it?”
“Sonny Tate played on the high school football team with Terry and Blake,” Gilroy explained. “He and Terry, they were kind of alike. But different. They were both naturals but Terry was more intense, driven. Sonny, he was out for laughs.” He smiled, almost in embarrassment.
The others, Stevenson and Leedale, sat back as though hearing a favourite story being told for the hundredth time.
“Those guys, your cousin and Sonny, they had it made,” Gilroy went on. “They had everything. Looks, brains, sense of humour . . . You’d think they’d be close buddies, but they weren’t. Weren’t close at all. They moved in different circles.”
“Sonny coulda been a better football player than Terry Godwin,” Leedale grumbled. “If he’d wanted to. Sonny Tate,” he said, leaning toward McGuire as though planning a conspiracy, “could also have banged every broad in town between the age of twelve and seventy-five if he’d wanted to.” He raised his eyebrows and nodded. “It’s true. And that’s not all.” He leered at McGuire.
“You going to tell me the rest?” McGuire asked. “About him and the Sanders woman?”
Leedale looked at the others. Mike Gilroy was turning his glass of mineral water in circles. Blake Stevenson was staring across the room as though lost in thought. “Should we tell him about it?” Leedale asked them. “Should we?”
“Hey, I’m asking you to,” McGuire snapped, and Leedale shifted his body a few inches away from McGuire.
Mike Gilroy ignored McGuire’s outburst. He leaned across the table and said in a low voice, “Sonny Tate killed that Sanders woman thirty years ago when he was eighteen years old and every kid in town knew it. They knew it.”
“He got away with it,” Leedale said, staring into McGuire’s eyes. “The guy got away with murder.” He grinned and shook his head in wonder. “The son of a bitch got away with murder.”
“Way it looks to us, anyway,” Gilroy commented, sitting back in the booth and shrugging his shoulders.
“You want to hear about it because you’re a cop, right?” Leedale asked McGuire.
“Not anymore,” McGuire said. “I’m not a cop anymore.”
“Then why are you so interested in this thing?” Mike Gilroy asked. “If Cora had some proof or something, why not take it over to the cops, over to that guy. Morton? That his name?”
“Morton hasn’t had a lot of experience handling murders,” McGuire replied. “I have. Besides, there are other things involved.”
“Like what?” Leedale asked.
“Tell me how this Tate guy got away with murder,” McGuire said, looking across the table at Gilroy.
Mike Gilroy shrugged and nodded his head. “Sonny Tate wasn’t from the best part of town. He lived over near Harwich. Father drove a truck, I think, when he was alive, and his mother worked in a diner. He had two sisters. One was kind of nice, the other was a bit wild. And he wasn’t great looking. Not like Terry Godwin. Terry was almost pretty, wasn’t he? Tall, slim, fair-haired. Sonny had thick, curly, black hair, kind of a square face, built like a fire hydrant. Strong, really strong. And Sonny had . . .” Gilroy looked for the word on the ceiling of the bar.
“Charm,” Leedale offered.
“Charisma,” Stevenson suggested.
“Yeah, that’s close to it, I guess,” Gilroy said, nodding at Stevenson. “Charisma. Never had a pot to piss in but old Sonny always had something going, you know? He was like a gypsy. Heard he wound up living like one, too.”
“Even looked a little gypsy,” Leedale said. “Dark, kind of swarthy.”
“Sonny was always a step ahead of everybody else, you know?” Gilroy resumed. “Terry Godwin, he could score on the football field and in the back seats of cars, I guess. But Terry wasn’t the guy everybody followed. Like, if there was some kind of new music or fashion or hip saying—”
“Hip?” Leedale exploded in derisive laughter. “When the hell was the last time you heard that word? Hip?”
“Let him tell the story,” McGuire ordered, and Leedale said, “Sure, what the hell,” and slouched back in the booth again.
“You gotta remember that everybody loved the guy,” Gilroy said with awe. “Terry Godwin, I mean, he was our buddy and everything, but he let things go to his head a little. You know, he had his own circle of friends, his own clique, hell, we were in it, we were all close and hung around him, just like any high school hero. But not Sonny. Sonny’s family really had to struggle. I think it made him a little humble.”
“Never cut anybody else’s grass, Sonny didn’t,” Leedale added. He drained his glass of beer and waved the bartender over for another. “He was no bird dog. Terry, he’d be after every cute little snatch he saw. Not Sonny.”
“Kind of guy didn’t want to make enemies,” Gilroy said. “Which doesn’t mean he avoided trouble.”
“He could handle himself in a fight,” Blake Stevenson offered.
“Saw him clean up three punks from Boston down by the lighthouse one night. Watched the whole thing, start to finish,” Parker Leedale boasted. “They just pushed him too far. Sonny threw one guy over the railing, knocked another one senseless. Third guy crawled under his truck trying to get away from Sonny. Remember that?” Leedale asked Blake Stevenson. “You were there. Remember that?”
Stevenson said he remembered.
“He sounds like the stuff of legend,” McGuire said. He had finished his Molson’s and felt like another. Before he could order, Gilroy resumed his story.
“Anyway, in the spring of our last year of high school—we were all in the same graduating class, Sonny, Blake, Parker, Terry and me—Sonny got himself fixed up with an older woman. She was twenty-eight and she lived out on Nickerson’s Neck—you know where that is?”
McGuire said he didn’t.
“North of here, juts out into Crow’s Pond. That’s where the big money lives, next to the golf club.” He jabbed a thumb at Blake Stevenson. “Blake’s out near there, proving he’s richer than the rest of us, right?”
Blake Stevenson shrugged his shoulders and continued staring into his drink.
Gilroy lowered his voice again. “Seems funny to call a twenty-eight-year-old woman ‘older’ at our age. But she sure as hell was when we were all seventeen, eighteen. She was a widow. She’d married some rich guy and he got himself killed in a car crash out west the year before. Lived alone in a big house in Harbour Cove on Nickerson’s Neck. She advertised for somebody to do yard work and Sonny answered.”
“Had him in the sack with her, second time he was over,” Parker Leedale said.
“You know that for a fact?” McGuire asked.
Everyone said he knew it for a fact. “Sonny wouldn’t brag, mind you,” Gilroy continued. “But it was pretty clear she was teaching him things even Sonny Tate hadn’t learned in the back seat of a Chevy.”
“She had a red Chrysler convertible, brand new,” Parker Leedale added. “Jesus, what a car!”
“She’d loan it to Sonny on weekends,” Mike Gilroy said. “Came into town once and picked a bunch of us up. We took off for Hyannis, just to drive around, look at girls.”
“He was always careful to fill the tank with gas afterwards,” Parker Leedale added. “Gotta be fair to Cyn, he’d say.”
“Who?” McGuire frowned.
“Cynthia. Cynthia Sanders.” Mike Gilroy was staring down into his glass again. “Good-looking woman. Jesus, she was a beauty.”
“So what was she doing hanging around with a kid, what, seventeen, eighteen years old?” McGuire said.
“Who knows?” Gilroy shrugged. “Besides, like we’ve been telling you, Sonny was no ordinary kid. This guy was special, McGuire.”
“He was a fucking hero,” Leedale said, almost with resentment. “More than Terry Godwin was to a lot of us.”
“That’s true, that’s true.” Gilroy nodded his head at McGuire as though trying to convince the other man. “And this woman, Cynthia Sanders, she had lots of older guys from the country club trying to get into her pants.”
“Sonny told me she went to dinner with one of them one night and when she came home she ditched the older guy at the front door and met Sonny out on the patio, got it on with him right there,” Leedale said. “Her date’s still backing his Lincoln out of the driveway and she’s already got Sonny’s fly open. Christ!”
McGuire caught the eye of the waiter and held his empty bottle in the air, signaling for another. “Who else?” he asked the others. “I’m buying.”
“I’ll have another,” Leedale said.
Gilroy resumed his story. “Anyway, here’s what happened—or what we think happened—
the weekend after we graduated. Everybody in the graduating class was planning parties. Parker and me and a bunch of others organized a clambake on Nauset Beach—you know where that is?”
“Below the lighthouse,” McGuire replied.
“Yeah, under the bluffs where the sandbar’s maybe a hundred feet offshore,” Gilroy nodded. “There were about thirty kids coming. We all got barrels of beer and clams, piles of driftwood for the fire. . . . All of it illegal, of course, but that was going to be the fun of it. If the Coast Guard showed up, we’d swim across this shallow channel to the sandbar and take off. They never would’ve found us.”
“I got the beer, you showed up later with a barrel of clams,” Leedale recalled. “Shorty Hargrove was there, Lizzie what’s-her-name, whole bunch of us.”
“You still owe me for the clams,” Gilroy smiled.
“Bullshit,” Leedale said in mock anger. “Where’d you go to get ’em, Portland for Christ’s sake?”
“Jesus, I got blasted that night,” Gilroy said. He smiled with embarrassment. “Woke up in the morning on the sandbar, heaving my guts out with the tide coming in. That’s what woke me up, the water rising around me, getting me wet. . . .”
“You were drunker’n two skunks when you finally arrived with the clams,” Parker Leedale sneered. “Hell, you couldn’t even carry the barrel down from the bluff. Me ’n’ Jimmy Rae, we had to climb up and carry ’em down to the sandbar for you.”
“I spent the evening with Terry,” Blake Stevenson interrupted. “At his house. Just a quiet night. We had a wonderful time. Cora was a delightful woman back then, when Terry was still alive.”
“So what happened?” McGuire asked Gilroy impatiently.
“We had a good time but Sonny never showed.” It was Parker Leedale, eager to pick up the thread of the story. “He never came. Mike and I, we saw him the next day, asked him where he’d been. He said he’d had a date that night and he winked at us.”
“So we figured he spent the night at Cynthia’s,” Mike Gilroy said. “We didn’t ask, you know?”
“Especially when they found her body,” Parker Leedale added with excessive drama.
McGuire turned to look at him.
“She was in bed, buck naked. That’s what we heard, all over town the next day,” Leedale whispered. “The telephone cord was tied or tangled or some damn thing around her neck.”
“But she wasn’t strangled,” Gilroy added. “At least, that’s not what killed her. She’d choked on her own vomit.”
“She was pretty drunk, I’d heard.” It was Leedale again.
“One of her older boyfriends had come around to see her that day,” Mike Gilroy said. “The front door was open, all the lights were on. He called, went upstairs and found her.”
“Where was the car?” McGuire asked.
“In the garage. Untouched.” It was Gilroy, picking up the story again.
“It was all in the papers,” Parker Leedale added.
“And did they talk to your friend Sonny?” McGuire asked.
“Sure,” Gilroy said. “All her neighbours had seen him around.”
“What happened?”
Gilroy shrugged. “Nothing. They interviewed him once, the day after the body was discovered. Never talked to him again. Held an inquest and the coroner said he suspected foul play by person or persons unknown, something like that. She might have been strangled or she might have just fallen out of bed, dead drunk, got tangled in the telephone cord, started to throw up. . . .” He shrugged again.
“Now that’s a bullshit verdict if you ever heard one, right, McGuire?” Leedale said. “‘Suspected foul play by a person or persons unknown?’”
McGuire nodded absently. The waiter arrived with a bottle of Molson’s for McGuire and another draft beer for Leedale. McGuire began to dig in his pocket for money but Blake Stevenson shook his head and paid the waiter, telling him to keep the change.
“Here’s the clincher,” Leedale added, bringing his face closer to McGuire. “The next day, the very next day after the cops talk to Sonny Tate, he’s gone. Out of here. Headed for Boston where he gets a job with some ad agency. Then, couple of years later, he’s down in New York, a big shot on Madison Avenue, partner in some hot outfit down there. Never comes back here except for his mother’s funeral, stuff like that.”
“Doesn’t mean much,” McGuire said.
“He did time,” Gilroy said, staring at McGuire.
“Who?” McGuire asked. The beer was cold, inviting. “Who did?”
“Sonny,” Gilroy said, his tone serious, somewhere between shock and dismay. “Heard he did three years in a federal prison in Florida. Got out a few years ago.”
“What was the charge?”
“Narcotics. He started his own advertising agency in New York. Did well for a few years, then went broke. I heard his partners screwed him but who knows? Anyway, he made some contacts in the drug racket and wound up in Lauderdale where he lived on a yacht for years, bringing grass and coke in from South America. The feds finally caught up with him.”
“So, what do you think?” Parker Leedale demanded, nudging McGuire with an elbow.
“About what?”
“About Sonny. Did he get away with murder or didn’t he? Doesn’t it sound like it to you?”
“Even if he did,” Mike Gilroy said, spreading his hands palms up and sitting back in the booth, “what does it matter now?”
“Exactly,” Blake Stevenson said. “Besides, no one has heard from Sonny Tate in years.”
“What’d Cora know?” Leedale asked. “About the murder? What’d she tell you about it? She left a letter for you or something?”
“Something like that,” McGuire said. He set his beer aside, half finished.
Mike Gilroy looked at his watch. “Wow, check the time,” he said, and he stood and stretched his arms above his head. “Don’t know about you guys but I’ve got work tomorrow.”
They rode back to the Leedale home in silence, Mike Gilroy driving, McGuire in the front passenger seat, Parker Leedale and Blake Stevenson in the rear. Ahead of them, on Miner’s Lane, the lights of the Leedale house glowed softly in the darkness. A woman’s figure was silhouetted in one window. As the car pulled in the driveway, it moved quickly aside.
“You okay?” Mike Gilroy asked Stevenson as the overweight man extruded his bulk from the rear of the Volvo.
“I’m okay,” Stevenson replied. “I’ll get Ellie to drive.”
Bunny Gilroy, who had been waiting impatiently at the window, emerged from the house, slipping into a light topcoat as she approached the car. “You guys have fun?” she asked.
“An excellent time,” Blake Stevenson replied in his booming voice. “Solved many of the world’s more pressing problems.”
“Hey,” Gilroy smiled after McGuire thanked him for the lift, “we could be all wet, you know. About Sonny Tate, I mean.” He grinned widely and spread his arms in a gesture of doubt. “A hundred guys, one of her neighbours maybe, could’ve done her in. Or maybe it really was an accident and the local cops just bungled it. They weren’t exactly brain surgeons back then. Besides, after thirty years, who cares?”
“What happened to him?” McGuire asked, pausing in the open door of the car. “Anybody know where he is now?”
“Who? Sonny?” It was Parker Leedale, standing next to McGuire and swaying from side to side. “I heard he’s living in Boston. Up on Beacon Hill. Son of a bitch always landed on his feet.”
McGuire held the door of the Volvo open for Bunny Gilroy, who slid in next to her husband, bid McGuire a brief “Bye!” and began chattering to Mike Gilroy as he backed the car onto Mill Pond Road.
As Gilroy’s Volvo pulled away, Leedale gripped McGuire’s elbow. “Hey, Blake,” he called to Stevenson, who was about to enter the front door of the Leedale home. “Tell June I want to show McGuire here something in Cora’s house, okay? I’ll be over in a few minutes. And I’ll give you a call later in the week.”
Stevenson stood silently on the walk, his hands in his pockets, and watched the two men cross the road to the darkened house.
“Show me? What do you need to show me?” McGuire asked as Leedale walked beside him, his head lowered.
“It’s, uh, the security system Cora had installed,” Leedale replied. He stumbled once, steadied himself against McGuire and said, “Shit, I think I’m gonna throw up.”
“Not in the house,” McGuire ordered.
Leedale stood, swaying from side to side, his head back, as McGuire reached the front door. “I’m okay,” he said. “I’m all right now.”
McGuire grunted, twisted the key in the lock and stepped through the doorway. Leedale walked directly past him, crossed the living room and slumped in a Queen Anne chair.
After switching on the lights, McGuire strode to the fireplace, leaned against it and stared at Leedale, who was resting his head on one hand, the other draped over the arm of the chair. “What’s on your mind?” McGuire demanded.
When Leedale looked up at McGuire, his face had grown ashen and his eyes were beginning to flood with tears. “Did . . .” Leedale began, then turned away. “You ever do any, uh . . .” Leedale hesitated, then looked down to discover something engrossing about his fingernails. “You ever do any, what do you call it? Tailing? Like private detective work?”
“Some.”
“You interested? In doing some while you’re here? I’ll pay you. . . .”
“No, I’m not interested.” McGuire pushed away from the fireplace and walked toward the front door. “Look, Parker,” he said, passing the Queen Anne chair, “I’ve had a long day, one beer too many, and I’m—”
“I think my wife’s having an affair.” Leedale blurted the words like a man suddenly being sick to his stomach and surprising himself.
McGuire paused and looked back at Leedale, who was staring into the empty fireplace. “Why,” McGuire asked, speaking each word slowly and distinctly, “in the hell are you telling me this?”
“You think I can tell those guys?” Leedale replied almost angrily, waving his arm in the direction of Main Street. “You think I can admit to my friends that my wife is screwing some other man?”
“Do you know that for sure?”
Leedale’s cheeks were wet with tears. “Yes. No. I think so. She . . . she disappears some afternoons and I caught her in a lie once and . . . and I . . . I figure she’s spending time in a motel room somewhere. . . . Shit, McGuire, we’ve been married twenty-five, no, twenty-six years. Twenty-six years, no kids, she can’t have kids, all she’s got is the house, she even works with me nearly every goddamn day. Woman like that, maybe she needs some excitement. . . .”
“I still don’t know why you’re talking to me about this.”
Leedale turned to stare at McGuire, his mood now belligerent. “You were a homicide cop, right? There’s nothing can shock you anymore, right? So I can trust you. To me it’s a tragedy. To you it’s just another day’s dirty work. Look, all I’m asking is, you find out if it’s true, what it’s all about and I’ll pay you for your time. And you’re gone. You’re not staying around here, living in this house, are you? You’ll sell it, pocket the money, right?”
“Probably.”
“Sure you will. Then you’ll be back in the Bahamas or wherever the hell it is you live. How the hell can I get somebody in town, any P.I. on the Cape, to follow June? They all know me. I’m a lawyer, for Christ’s sake. I deal with them all the time. For the rest of my life, they’ll see me as some jerk whose wife was . . .” Parker Leedale shook his head and closed his eyes.
McGuire turned his back on Leedale, shoved his hands in his pockets, breathed deeply and twisted to study the stricken man again. “Look, Parker,” he explained, softening his voice. “Every married man I ever knew suspected his wife of cheating on him at least once in his life, if only to persuade himself that she was still attractive to other guys. And you know what? Most of the time, when all the clues are there, they’re wrong. Trust me on that. If she’s dropping clues, it’s probably not happening. I don’t think you need a detective. Maybe all you need is a closer relationship with your wife. You ever thought about that?”
Leedale stared at McGuire in angry silence for a moment before bolting from the chair. “Sure,” he snapped, stumbled once and steadied himself against a wall. “Nothin’ to it. Forget what I said. I’m just a little drunk, that’s all. See . . .” He paused, his hand on the knob of the front door. “See you around.”
Leedale wrenched open the door and slammed it shut, hard enough to rattle Cora’s display of nineteenth-century cranberry glass in the Chippendale cabinet.
Goodnight, jerk, McGuire said silently as he walked through the house switching off lights.
McGuire had seen the quiet panic in June Leedale’s eyes earlier in the day, had recognized sadness and panic in her every gesture. If she wasn’t being unfaithful, McGuire decided, she was giving one hell of a convincing performance.