McGuire began by listing the names of every luxury hotel he could recall in Nassau. There were fourteen in all. Then, seated at the kitchen telephone, he obtained the telephone number of each hotel from a quickly exasperated Bahamian telephone operator, writing each number next to the hotel name.
Almost an hour after he began he found her at the Royal Bahamian, near the bottom of his list. She answered on the third ring, and McGuire felt something in his chest grow lighter and begin to rise, lifting, expanding him.
“Hello, Barbara.”
Her voice hovered among electronic echoes. “Who . . . ?” she began. “Who is this?”
“It’s Joe. I’ve been trying to reach you.”
A short laugh, high and light. “I know, I know. I’m sorry. Some friends are down here and we’ve been, I’ve been, catching up on news and shopping, you know, in and out, walking on the beach. The weather’s been so nice, until today. There’s a cold front moving in and we’ve had a little rain and lots of wind. What’s the weather like there?”
McGuire told her it was beautiful. He sat down, and the thing that had floated in his chest a moment ago began to gather weight and sink.
“That’s great,” she said. She’s speaking with a smile, McGuire noted. When she speaks, you can hear the smile in her voice but it’s forced, it’s put there for a reason, not just because she’s glad to hear from me. “That part of the country is so nice this time of year when the weather is good,” Barbara was saying.
“I miss you.” There was no other way to put it. McGuire’s voice dropped even lower. “I miss you a lot.”
“Me too.” Barbara’s voice cracked and McGuire thought of a chain of crumbling clay mountains, weakened and dry, bits of them falling away from the whole. “When . . .” She cleared her throat. “How long do you expect to be there?”
“I don’t know,” McGuire replied. “There might be something to Cora’s death. Then again, there might not. Anyway, why don’t you come up here with me? Catch a plane to Boston tomorrow, I’ll meet you at the airport. . . .”
She laughed nervously at the idea. “Oh no, no, no, I don’t think so.”
“You’d rather stay in Nassau? The place is as tacky as a Moroccan whorehouse.”
“What do you know about those?” she teased. But there was a strain to her voice, an attempt to sound too casual, too relaxed.
“It’s a figure of speech, damn it. Anyway . . .”
“When did you say you’d be coming down?” she interrupted.
“I didn’t. I’m looking into something, an old murder case. . . .”
“Sounds fascinating.”
McGuire breathed deeply, one long intake of air, one slow release. “Barbara,” he said, his voice low. “What in hell is going on?”
“Let’s talk when I see you. Okay?”
“When will that be?” McGuire asked, hearing the urgency in his voice echo across the space between them.
“I’m not sure.” A pause, several heartbeats too long. “Give me your number there and I’ll call and let you know. Tomorrow. I’ll call tomorrow.”
McGuire read Cora’s number to her from the phone dial. Then they said their goodbyes awkwardly, McGuire brusque and unaccountably angry, Barbara almost lingering over each word. After hanging up McGuire stared at the telephone, debating whether to strike it in fury or leave it be. He decided to leave it be, stood up and was four paces away toward the stairs when it rang. In two long strides he had the receiver at his ear again.
“Joe McGuire?” A man’s voice, gravelly and familiar.
“Yeah.”
“Blake Stevenson.”
McGuire stared up at the ceiling in irritation.
Before McGuire could reply, Stevenson said: “The Leedales, Parker and June, are here for dinner. Mike and Bunny Gilroy are on their way. We’ll have a few drinks, something to eat, then watch the ball game. Anyway, we’d like you to join us, add a little class and colour to the evening. Can you do that?”
McGuire rubbed his eyes. What the hell. “Yeah. Guess I can.”
“We’re out on Oyster Pond Road,” Stevenson said affably. “Know where that is?”
“Don’t have a clue.”
“Take Old Queen Anne Road and turn right at the second street past Hannaford’s Real Estate,” Stevenson explained. “That’s Gregor Road. You go beyond the golf club—it’ll be on your left, and watch for the next street on your right. That’s ours, Oyster Pond Road. We’re twenty-eight twenty-five, second house in on your left. Big white place on a hill. Can’t miss it. Long driveway.”
“I’ll try to find it,” McGuire said.
“See you in, what? An hour maybe?”
McGuire was about to agree when, like a light illuminating a distant room in a large dark house, the realization struck him.
Through all their conversation on the telephone, Barbara had never mentioned his name.
In fact, anyone listening to her end of the conversation would not even know she had been speaking to a man.
Fog blanketed Nickerson’s Neck by the time McGuire arrived, and he passed 2825 Oyster Pond Road twice, not seeing Stevenson stenciled on the mailbox by the side of the road until he drove past a third time at a crawl, his head out the driver’s window.
The house sat on a low rise, well back from the road, where the fog had not encroached so thickly. A wide porch overlooked Oyster Pond Road and the pond itself to the west. Behind the house, a deep grassy clearing ended at a stand of pine trees standing like black sentinels in the deepening dusk.
Two cars, the Gilroys’ Volvo station wagon and the Leedales’ Audi, were on a gravel clearing in front of a rock garden overgrown with shrubs and flowers. Blake’s vintage Mercedes and a red two-seater sports car sat in front of the garage. McGuire parked alongside the Audi and mounted the wide steps fronting the house, the entrance flanked by a pair of reclining stone lions. Just as he reached the top step, the heavy oak front door swung open and Blake Stevenson beckoned McGuire inside.
“You found us,” Stevenson said, a wide smile on his face and a stemware glass held in one fleshy hand. He wore a beige cardigan over an open-necked white shirt and gray slacks, and extended his free hand to shake McGuire’s. “Good man. Come on in, catch up with the rest of us in the Martini race.”
The interior of the house reminded McGuire of a picture catalog for expensive furniture, the perfectly coordinated colours and fabrics creating an impression of wealth without any semblance of personality or individuality.
An Oriental carpet led down the long centre hall. To the left McGuire noted a large living room crowded with brocaded French Provincial sofas and chairs and beyond it, through large open double doors, a dining room with cranberry-red walls, floral draperies, an oak table and ten chairs and a massive baroque crystal chandelier. Near the end of the hall an elaborate mahogany side table held a telephone, a crystal vase of flowers and two Royal Doulton figurines, porcelain women in bustles and flowered hats.
The hard-edged voice of Ellie Stevenson exploded in laughter from somewhere deeper in the house.
“We’re in the kitchen,” Blake Stevenson said, walking ahead of McGuire to lead the way. “You’re just in time to eat.”
The laughter subsided as McGuire entered the kitchen. Seated at a round oak table in front of a bay window overlooking the rear garden were Mike Gilroy and Parker Leedale. June Leedale stood at a counter near the refrigerator, her arms folded. Ellie Stevenson knelt in front of the stove wearing heavy oven mitts and pulling a large stoneware dish from the oven.
“Speak of the devil,” Mike Gilroy said.
Ellie Stevenson suppressed a laugh. “Hello, Sam Spade,” she said.
McGuire nodded to each in turn, his eyes locking on June Leedale’s for a moment longer than the others. She smiled back before turning to lift a half-empty Martini glass from the counter and raise it to her lips.
“You will sample the world’s best Martini,” Blake Stevenson asked. He lifted a large glass jug from the table for McGuire’s inspection.
“Second best,” muttered Mike Gilroy, but grinning.
“Rather have a beer,” McGuire replied. Someone was missing.
“A beer it is,” Blake Stevenson said, opening the refrigerator.
“I’m gonna try Bunny again,” Gilroy said, looking at his watch. He rose and walked to the hallway.
“Bunny’s out spending Mike’s money,” Blake Stevenson said, offering McGuire a Heineken and a glass. “Can’t seem to locate her.”
“Ouch! Damn!” Ellie Stevenson lifted the heavy earthenware bowl from the oven and carried it across the kitchen in front of her like an offering, taking short quick steps and barking at her husband to spread a tea towel on the dining-room table instead of standing there like a dummy, for Christ’s sake.
In the dining room she shook her hands in front of her to relieve their stiffness and laughed, looking back into the kitchen. “Come on, you guys,” she shouted. “I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’m starving.”
Ellie’s casserole, a bland concoction of shredded meat of unknown origin with peas and onions in a starchy cream sauce, was served on gold-edged porcelain dinnerware.
“Well, how is it?” Ellie Stevenson looked around the table, anticipating compliments. There were murmurs of “Good” and “Very nice” from everyone except McGuire.
McGuire was seated at one end of the table, Parker Leedale at the other. June Leedale was on her husband’s right, nearest the kitchen. Ellie and Blake Stevenson sat across from her.
Mike Gilroy, on McGuire’s left, ate little and frowned into his food.
“Where do you suppose she is?” Ellie Stevenson asked, reaching for a hot roll. She was smiling, almost enjoying Mike Gilroy’s discomfort.
“Out shopping,” Gilroy shrugged. “We’re doing the kitchen over, new cupboards and such. She’s probably looking at finishes or hardware. Something like that.”
Ellie Stevenson laughed aloud. “Yeah, something like that.” She turned to McGuire. “See you’ve got Sam Hannaford listing your aunt’s house,” she said, buttering the roll. “When do you expect to sell it?”
“Soon,” McGuire replied. He stared down at his plate. What the hell were the little gray bits? Were they meat or what? He pushed the food away and chose a hot roll.
“Could take a while, this time of year,” Ellie Stevenson said. “You should wait for spring. Unless you plan to live in the place until it’s sold.”
“Is that what you’re going to do?” June Leedale asked. Compared with Ellie’s strident voice, June’s was warm and liquid.
“No,” McGuire said. He reached for his beer. “I’m going back to the Bahamas.”
“When?” Blake Stevenson seemed to be enjoying his meal.
“When I learn more about Sonny Tate,” McGuire said evenly, “and Cynthia Sanders.”
“Cynthia Sanders?” Ellie Stevenson repeated McGuire’s words, her eyes wide.
“The woman who died, graduation weekend,” Mike Gilroy replied. He studied McGuire. “What does that have to do with selling your house?” he asked.
“It doesn’t,” McGuire said. “It has to do with someone murdering Cora.”
“Cora?” June Leedale asked. She lowered her fork. “You think Cora was murdered?” The others stared back at McGuire in silence.
“Ivan Hayward does.” McGuire sat back and folded his arms across his chest. “That’s why he was curious about her medication. If someone tampered with her capsules, if they substituted something that would slow her heart instead of stimulating it, she’d die.”
“You know that for sure?” Blake Stevenson asked.
McGuire looked at each face in turn. “I have some facts,” he said. “And some assumptions.”
“Bob Morton working with you on this?” Mike Gilroy asked.
McGuire shook his head. “It’s all unofficial. But I’ve made some links between Cora and the Sanders woman,” he lied. “And I’ve learned the details of her death.”
Ellie Stevenson threw back her head and laughed. “Jesus, you really are a gumshoe, aren’t you?” She looked at the others. “Isn’t that what they call these guys? Flatfoots, dicks, all that Humphrey Bogart crap?”
“Details?” June Leedale asked McGuire. Her voice smaller than ever, she seemed to have been holding her breath. “How? What is there to learn? That all happened thirty years ago.”
“Cora had something,” McGuire responded. “In her house.”
Another explosion of laughter from Ellie Stevenson. “Holy shit. Cora did it, right? I always knew that bitch had something to hide.”
“Ellie!” June Leedale was annoyed.
“Well, she’d never have anything to do with us,” Ellie protested. “Especially him.” She angled her head at her husband, who sat with his elbows on the table and his hands clasped in front of him.
“Cora could be a little strange.” Parker Leedale pushed himself from the table, a look of concern on his face.
“There may be nothing to it,” McGuire said, shrugging. “Right now I’m trying to pick up all I can about Sonny Tate.”
“Sonny Tate?” Ellie Stevenson leaned across the table to June Leedale. “Remember him? God, he was a hunk. Wonder what he looks like now? Probably fat and bald like chubby cheeks here,” and she laughed and reached a hand to touch the arm of her husband, who sat watching McGuire, stone-faced.
“If you think Sonny Tate murdered that woman,” Mike Gilroy said, “and that somebody also murdered your aunt and there’s a connection between the two, does that mean Sonny’s back in town? That he killed Cora?”
“A possibility,” McGuire nodded.
June Leedale rose abruptly. “I don’t like this kind of talk,” she said, lifting her plate from the table. “This is about two women . . . two women being murdered, and I don’t think it’s amusing at all.”
McGuire watched her leave the dining room and enter the kitchen. From his chair at the end of the table: he was the only one who could see her set her plate on the counter and lean against the refrigerator, her back to the dining room.
“Who’s for dessert?” Ellie Stevenson asked. “Maybe some Grand Marnier over ice cream?”
“Hell of an idea,” Mike Gilroy said. He rose from the table. “I’ll give Bunny another call.”
“The ball game’s on in a few minutes,” Blake Stevenson said. “Let’s have our dessert and coffee in the family room.”
“Sure, do your male bonding crap,” his wife said as her husband and Parker Leedale left the room.
McGuire looked back to the kitchen, but June Leedale had left. He heard her quick footsteps climbing the stairs.
“The line’s busy,” Gilroy said when he returned from the telephone. “It means she’s home anyway. Guess I’ll head over there. If she’s talking to her mother, she’ll be on the phone for hours.” He extended his hand to McGuire. “Good luck finding out whatever happened to Cora.” He shook his head. “I can’t imagine anybody wanting to hurt her, though.”
“Unless they had reason to,” McGuire added, and Gilroy shrugged. McGuire turned to Ellie Stevenson. “Thanks for dinner,” he said.
“What the hell, everybody’s leaving?” Ellie said, annoyed. “I just made ten cups of coffee. Stay for a coffee at least, McGuire,” she pleaded. “You don’t have to join the jocks in the family room. Go into the library and I’ll bring it to you there. It’s through the living room.” She sidled next to him. “I want to talk to you about something,” she said.
The library was paneled in dark walnut and furnished with brass-studded green leather chairs and matching sofa. Crystal decanters stood among leather-bound books on floor-to-ceiling shelves. Heavy brocaded draperies framed two windows facing the door. McGuire inspected the books on the shelves and the antique engravings on the walls before settling in one of the leather chairs. Almost immediately, Ellie Stevenson entered with coffee.
“You want some cognac with that?” she asked, setting the tray on a table next to McGuire’s chair.
McGuire said he didn’t.
“Well, I’m having some.” She chose a decanter from the shelf, splashed some into a small snifter, took a long swallow and sat on an arm of the sofa, looking at McGuire.
McGuire sampled the coffee, avoiding Ellie’s eyes. He disliked the woman and made no effort to disguise the fact, but her manner with him was warm and coy, almost awkwardly seductive.
“June’s tidying up for me in the kitchen,” she said. “The jocks are into the vintage port back there, Parker and Blake. Especially Blake. Fat old fart can’t stay away from the stuff.”
“How long have you two been married?” McGuire asked. As long as she was intruding upon his solitude, he might as well learn something about her.
“Twenty-three fucking years,” she replied. “But not necessarily vice versa,” and she erupted in laughter at her own joke.
“How did you meet?”
“High school. We dated some. Then I married a guy I met in college. A jerk from Yarmouth. Boring little shit. A bank manager, if you can believe it. That lasted a few years and I told him to get lost. Stevenson showed up and I jumped ship to him. He was making a decent salary, acting like Mr. Success. Impressed the hell out of me at first. Just like he’s trying to impress you.” She sampled her drink. “You married?”
McGuire shook his head. “Why?” he asked.
She shrugged her shoulders and slid from the arm of the sofa onto the cushion. “Just wondering. Guy like you is kind of mysterious, interesting. Not like those dull turds in the other room.” She toyed with her hair and grinned at McGuire. “Hell, aren’t you gonna ask me?” she said.
“Ask you what?”
“About twenty-three fucking years. And not vice versa.”
McGuire shook his head.
“He’s impotent.” She raised her glass for another long swallow of cognac. “Stupid son of a bitch hasn’t got it up for five years.” She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. “But will he get help? The hell he will. I’ll say, for Christ’s sake, do something about it, and he just looks away. Or down at his fat fucking stomach. Or blames it on his pills, all that shit he takes for blood pressure, his heartburn medicine, his tranquilizers. Asshole’s got an ego like an elephant’s got ears. Can’t stand the idea of confessing to anybody that he’s not perfect. Not even a shrink.”
“So why are you still married?” McGuire asked. His tranquilizers, McGuire thought. Like the ones that killed Cora?
“I dunno.” She became almost pensive, staring away beyond the tree line where the darkness was deepest. “Too much of a lazy shit to change, I guess.” A short laugh. “Besides, how else could I live like this on a teacher’s salary?”
She remained lost in thought and McGuire stole a look at her profile, seeing the young girl that still shone through when the older woman permitted it: the quick smile, the darting eyes and most of all the energy which had once been a vibrancy for life and now served only to fuel a strange and abiding anger.
She rose out of her reverie like a diver ascending from the calm of deep tropical waters, returning to a stormy surface. “What the hell,” she said, on the brink of laughter once again, “sex isn’t that hard to get, right? Guy like you must know all about that.” She cackled in peals of laughter as though she had just made, or heard, an intensely amusing comment.
“You said you wanted to talk to me,” he said.
“How long are you planning to stay around here?”
“No idea. Until I find some answers, settle some things.”
“I have two spare class periods every Friday afternoon.”
McGuire blinked at her. “I don’t think . . .” he began.
“Do you know I’ve never been in that house you’re living in, Cora’s house? Never. The old broad had something against us, Blake and me.”
“Are you looking for an invitation?”
“Yeah. Maybe some Friday afternoon.” She coiled her hair in her fingers, smiling, and her tongue emerged from one corner, sliding back and forth, in and out.
“Is that all you wanted to tell me?”
Her mood darkened. She looked away into the far corner of the room, drained her glass, set it aside and drew her teeth over her bottom lip several times. When she spoke, she avoided McGuire’s eyes. “Don’t believe any of that stuff Blake and Parker might tell you about Sonny Tate,” she said. “Christ, every time they get a few drinks in them, the two of them and Mike, somebody brings up the Sanders woman.”
McGuire waited for her to continue.
The telephone rang and she looked absently at the closed door. “Let fat-ass get it,” she slurred.
“What about Sonny Tate?” McGuire asked.
“He didn’t kill her,” Ellie Stevenson said. “No matter what those guys say. I knew him. I knew him better than they did. If you catch my drift.”
“Who do you think did it?”
She shrugged. “I got some ideas. Don’t know for sure. Don’t give a shit either. But it wasn’t Sonny. He was a little wild, sure. And he liked the girls, the girls liked him. But he couldn’t hurt anybody like that. Not intentionally.”
Heavy footsteps sounded in the hall.
She leaned toward McGuire. “You know what I think? I think it was your asshole cousin, Terry. Mister know it all, mister everything. I’ve heard things over the years, little bits here and there. That’s who I think did it. Terry Godwin.”
“Ellie?” The voice of Blake Stevenson sounded on the other side of the door. “You in there?”
“Yeah, I’m in here.”
The door opened and the moon face of her husband peered in. “That was Mike,” Blake said. “Bunny’s home. She was out shopping for appliances for their new kitchen or something.”
“Yeah, or something,” and Ellie laughed sarcastically.
“They may be over later,” her husband said. “You all right, Joe?”
McGuire set his coffee cup aside and rose from the chair. “I was just leaving.”
“Yeah, he was on his way,” Ellie said, glancing at McGuire as though he had said something that amused her.
“You’re not joining us for the game?” Blake asked.
McGuire shook his head and walked past both of them, Blake with his forehead creased in a quizzical expression, Ellie smirking at a secret thought. Passing through the kitchen, Ellie and Blake trailing him, McGuire said goodbye to June Leedale who sat at the table staring out at the night. She nodded absently. At the door, Blake Stevenson thanked him for coming, then excused himself as Parker Leedale shouted from somewhere beyond the dining room, “Blake, you gotta come see this!”
“If you think Terry murdered that woman,” McGuire asked Ellie when her husband left, “who do you think killed Cora?”
“Nobody,” Ellie replied. “I think she died from old bitch’s disease.” She shrugged her shoulders and laughed in her dry sarcastic manner. “Too bad you’ve got a problem with aggressive women, Romeo,” she said to McGuire’s back, and closed the door.