It was a small island, but there were many places one could hide a body. It could be buried in Bell Woods or in the soft sand of the cave at Otter Cove. It could lie undiscovered beneath the wildflowers in one of the meadows or on a hillside beneath a cairn of stones.
The first challenge would be in transporting a corpse in broad daylight.
If Fitch had died at the lighthouse—and Finn and Paul could not agree on this point, as Paul did not concur that the scratches in the light tower looked like marks left by clawing fingernails. But for the sake of argument, if Fitch had died at the lighthouse…the simplest thing would have been to bury him there. The lighthouse was off the beaten track and there was less chance of discovery by a stray hiker’s dog. It also eliminated the need to move the body any distance.
“It wouldn’t be hard to lift you,” Paul commented, examining Finn, who was sitting on Fitch’s bed. “Even when you’re your normal weight, you’re pretty skinny. Maybe one forty, one forty-five? Fitch was more muscular—not a lot a heavier, though.”
“A deadweight is different.”
“Even so. I could do it. You could do it if you didn’t have to carry someone too far.”
Finn considered. “We should talk to Miss Minton. I don’t know if her memory is as sharp as it used to be, but in the old days, no one traveled the road to The Birches without her seeing them. Con said she saw him that day. She might have seen someone else.”
“Is there another way to get to this house besides the main road?”
“There isn’t another drive. There’s a trail that leads to the back of the property.” He remembered that Hiram had been clearing poison ivy out that day along the path.
There was a tap on the door frame, and both Finn and Paul jumped guiltily.
“You boys have been up here awhile,” Martha said, bringing a tray into the bedroom and setting it on the desk where Paul sat. “I brought you some hot chocolate and lobster butter cookies.”
Paul spluttered and put a hand over his mouth, his gaze finding Finn’s.
Martha straightened and eyed Finn sternly. “Mr. Carlyle called a little while ago. He wanted to make sure you got home safely.”
Paul laughed outright. Finn ignored him. He said to Martha, “Con and I argued. It’s not anything new.”
“I don’t understand these things,” she said. “It seems to me that Mr. Carlyle still has powerful feelings for you. And despite what you say, I think you still have feelings for him. Is that such a bad thing? It’s not like there’s so much love in the world that people can afford to go turning it away.”
Finn tried to imagine what Con must have said to Martha to inspire that little speech.
He opened his mouth, but Paul forestalled him, saying, “Martha, between us, who do you think might have killed Fitch?”
She turned slowly and stared at him. “I loved Fitch,” she said. “But I’ll tell you right now, sonny, you’re meddling in things best left alone. And you’re dragging Finn into dangerous waters with you.”
“No one’s dragging me into anything,” Finn said quietly. “If someone killed Fitch, I can’t ignore that.”
“There are all kinds of things we have to ignore every day,” Martha said. “Sometimes it’s better for everyone to let certain things go.”
“You’re talking about turning a blind eye to murder, not spitting on the sidewalk,” Paul said shrilly.
“I know exactly what I’m talking about,” Martha said grimly. She looked at Finn. “Don’t you stay up too late, Finn.”
Paul closed the door after her with a suggestion of a bang. Catching Finn’s expression, he burst out laughing.
* * * * *
It was still raining on Thursday morning, a steady wash of silver rain that was almost invisible in the gray daylight. Fog shrouded the sea, pierced here and there by a dripping tree. It did not look like a particularly auspicious day for sleuthing.
“You don’t think it’s going to snow, do you?” Paul asked, meeting Finn on his way down to breakfast.
“It’s not cold enough.”
“Are you kidding me? I thought the next ice age had come last night.”
Finn threw Paul a guilty glance. He’d been perfectly warm; Martha had brought him extra blankets before he’d fallen asleep. Well, perhaps there was a blanket shortage at The Birches these days. Or perhaps not.
Probably not—as Martha still seemed a little stern when they found her in the kitchen. She ordered them to the table and began piling their plates.
It brought back comfortable memories. The kitchen was very warm and smelled deliciously of bacon and coffee and cinnamon rolls. Martha had the radio on low as she listened to the weather report.
“Paul and I are going to borrow the station wagon this morning,” Finn told her as she refilled his coffee cup. “Unless you or Hiram need it for something?”
Martha directed a disapproving look at Paul, who was busily eating his haystack eggs—baked eggs on fried potato sticks with cheese and bacon topping.
“Dangerous driving conditions today,” she pronounced like a hash-slinging oracle.
“We’ll be careful.”
Martha hmphed. “I don’t need the car today.” She didn’t say more, though it was clear she wished to. Paul grimaced at his plate without looking up.
Breakfast finished, Finn and Paul climbed into the station wagon—Paul driving—and headed slowly and cautiously down the muddy road to Estelle Minton’s.
“So your uncle and the ex-school teacher… Are they…?” Paul peered over the steering wheel at the lazy whorl of fog before them.
“Are they— Huh?” Finn stared at him and did a double take. “Uncle Thomas and Barnaby? God no. They’ve been friends forever.”
“So?”
“You better get your gaydar recalibrated. Neither of them is a member of the sisterhood. I think Barnaby used to have a thing for Miss Minton, and Uncle Thomas was once engaged to a lady from the mainland.”
“What happened to the lady from the mainland?”
“The story is she declined to live on an island, and Uncle Tom couldn’t picture living anywhere else.”
“Uncle Tom is a little set in his ways, isn’t he?”
“Here it is,” Finn interrupted. “You can pull to the side of the road, but don’t get stuck in the mud.”
Most days Miss Minton could be found working out in her yard, but today there was no sign of her, although the battered pickup in the drive indicated she was home. White trails of fog wreathed the rosebushes and trees as though dragged there by the rain. A wheelbarrow sat tipped over next to stacked bags of fertilizer and soil amendment.
Finn swore as his cane sank into the mud, and Paul laughed.
“Need a hand?”
“How about a new leg?”
Crossing the deserted road, they entered through the gate. They knocked on the front door, and after a few seconds it opened. Miss Minton, dressed in comfortably baggy flannels and jeans, stared at them in surprise.
“Finn Barret. Something wrong at The Birches?”
“Nothing like that,” Finn said apologetically. “I was hoping to maybe have a word with you?”
“Well, well.” She directed a skeptical look at Paul. “I expect you’d better come in.”
They followed her into a large room with a picture window that looked out on the road. The room was comfortably furnished in crisp blue and white. A fire burned cheerfully in the grate. A black cat leisurely groomed itself on the pillow-piled sofa.
“Well, you’d better have a seat,” their hostess said. “This isn’t weather for fooling around on the roads. It must be something pretty important to bring you down here?”
Finn glanced at Paul, who was watching him, clearly wanting Finn to take charge here. Which was all very well, but it seemed sort of tactless to hint to Miss Minton he thought her longtime friends and neighbors might be murderers.
“This is going to seem like an odd request,” he said. “I wanted to put that famous memory of yours to the test.”
Miss Minton raised her eyebrows but said nothing.
“August, three years ago…Fitch and I both left the island.” He paused, but Miss Minton had nothing to say to that. “I left on the nineteenth. It was a Tuesday, about eleven o’clock in the morning. We always thought Fitch left on the previous Monday afternoon.”
“But?”
“But no one ever saw him again,” Finn said. “At least, if they did, they’re not admitting it.”
Miss Minton’s brows knitted. “I’m not sure what you’re getting at. Are you saying… What are you saying?”
“We think Fitch is dead,” Paul said as Finn groped for a less shocking way to break the news. “We think someone on this island might have killed him.”
Finn turned on him, and meeting that exasperated stare, Paul said, “What? That’s what we think!”
To Miss Minton, Finn said, “It does seem like Fitch never left the island, and what we were wondering was whether you remembered anything that might have stood out from the ordinary.”
“When?”
“That Monday. The eighteenth of August. I thought you might remember because it was during the time you were still taking art lessons from Uncle Tom.”
Miss Minton looked taken aback. “You expect me to remember something that happened three years ago? Such as what?”
“Like who traveled to and from The Birches that day.”
She was watching him with a peculiar alertness. “Ah,” she said finally. She seemed to look inward. At last she said, “My lessons were Mondays and Wednesdays, but I don’t remember taking a lesson that week.”
“Uncle Tom was supposed to fly to Boston or somewhere for an art show or a lecture. His flight was canceled on Monday, but he spent most of the day in Portland at the airport.”
“That’s right…” Miss Minton said slowly. “I do remember. Con walked past here about lunchtime right before I came in from the garden to change clothes. I don’t remember seeing him walk back, but he wasn’t at The Birches when I arrived about half an hour later. No one was there at all, and I came back home.”
“Did you see anyone else pass here on their way to The Birches that day?”
“It was a long time ago, Finn. I seem to remember your uncle driving past early in the evening. And you and Con walked by about an hour and a half after that.” Her smile was wry. “Con’s voice carried. I remember that.”
Finn colored.
“I’m surprised I remember that much after all this time,” Miss Minton commented, reaching for the cat and cuddling it in her arms.
“Why do you suppose that is?” Paul asked.
Miss Minton gave him a considering stare. “I don’t know. I guess the reason it stayed in my mind is because it was the summer—the very week, in fact—the Barret Boys left Seal Island.”
* * * * *
“She’s like something straight out of Stephen King,” Paul commented as they got back into the car. “Or possibly, What Not to Wear.”
“I don’t see that,” Finn replied irritably. Sometimes Paul’s casual unkindness reminded him of Fitch. “She’s had a hard life.”
“So had Dolores Claiborne. So had Cujo.”
Finn sat unmoving, not really listening. The fog blanketed the car in white, giving them the illusion of complete and utter privacy. “She used to be different when she was younger.”
Paul groaned. “Why do people always say that? Everyone is different when they’re younger. Nobody is born a crotchety old fart.” Studying Finn’s profile, he asked reluctantly, “Different how?”
“Happier. Softer. Pretty.”
“I’ll take your word for it.”
“I didn’t know her well, but she and Uncle Tom have been friends for years. She used to babysit Con—I didn’t know her then, naturally, but she was always crazy about him. They’re third or fourth cousins, I think.”
“Toto, I have a feeling we’re not in Arkansas anymore.”
“I don’t mean that way. She never married, never had kids of her own. Actually, I always thought those art lessons were more about the way she liked Uncle Tom than her really wanting to become a painter.”
“Sacrilege. I thought it was old Barnaby she had a thing for?”
“She did. Well, I mean…I have no idea. What do kids know? She might have been sweet on Barnaby or he might have been sweet on her.”
“As fascinating as Miss Minton’s love life is, where to now?”
Finn said slowly, “The lighthouse.”
“I think so, yeah.”
There were a few alarming seconds while the car’s tires spun in the mud, but then they gained traction and were on the road once more, proceeding with great caution through the white nothingness.
“For the record, I hate driving in this,” Paul said.
Finn nodded absently.
“The fact that she didn’t see anyone but Con that day doesn’t mean that no one else went up to The Birches,” Paul said when Finn’s silence persisted. “They could have gone in the back way. We didn’t talk to Ezra or whatever his name is.”
“Hiram.”
“Right. Maybe he saw someone. Or maybe she missed them. Him.”
“Maybe.”
The car bounced along the uneven track, Paul accelerating as the mist thinned out in patches. “If you think about it,” he said, “it’s kind of hard to believe that someone would simply walk up and shove Fitch off the tower, and then what? Scrape him off the rocks and hide him under a bush?”
Finn rubbed his forehead, smoothing away the little ache in his temple.
“True. To really hide a body you’d either have to weight it down and dump it in the ocean or dig a grave deep enough that no one would accidentally uncover it.”
“If he was dumped in the ocean three years ago, we’re wasting our time.”
“I know.”
“Obviously, if he was killed at the lighthouse, whoever did it couldn’t take a chance on moving a body around in broad daylight. That’s what we think, right? That he was killed in broad daylight?”
“Yes. No one seems to have seen him after he and Con parted ways.”
“Which leads me to wonder—and you won’t like this—how could anyone know he’d be up there?”
Finn sighed. “Either it was Con, and he killed Fitch when he hit him—which I don’t believe—or it was someone who was maybe following Fitch?” He said slowly, working it out, “Or maybe it was someone Fitch had originally planned to meet? Because I remember that night Con was saying to me that it hadn’t been planned, that it hadn’t been arranged, it had just happened. That he’d actually come up to the lighthouse to find me because I was supposed to be sketching there that day.”
Paul’s eyes were trained on the road ahead. He grunted. “Not bad.”
“Here, you’ve missed the turn.”
Paul braked sharply, reversed, and turned off the road leading up to the lighthouse.
“So…you think Fitch arranged to meet this person, but Con showed up first, and Fitch grabbed the opportunity as it presented itself? Yeah, I can see that. He’d enjoy rubbing someone’s nose in it.”
Finn shot him a sideways look and said nothing.
“It could have been someone who was there for another reason, though.” Paul spoke meditatively, “Someone who hiked up there for the view or to sketch…”
Finn’s stomach did an unpleasant flip-flop.
Paul rambled cheerfully on. “Maybe this person had an innocent reason for being there but went a little crazy when he saw what was happening. Maybe he pretended to walk away and hid, and when Con left, he came back and killed Fitch. Because it seems to me that whoever killed Fitch must have been someone Fitch wasn’t afraid of.”
“Fitch wasn’t afraid of anyone.”
“No. He wasn’t.”
Finn added, “And I didn’t come back and kill him. It happened exactly like I said it did.”
Paul chuckled. “I never doubted you. Here we are.” The lighthouse swung suddenly into the windshield’s view, seeming to loom up out of the mist.
They took their flashlights and jackets, got out of the car, and stood staring up at the white tower. A gull appeared out of the mist, crying eerily and disappearing once more.
Paul said, “Let’s put our emotions aside for a sec and look at this logically. If Fitch was killed here, then there’s a good chance he’s buried here. Somewhere. I can’t see anyone taking the risk of moving a body very far.”
“I can’t either.”
“Could he be buried inside? Maybe put into a wall or stuck under the flooring?”
It took Finn a moment to control his voice. “I guess that’s what we’re going to find out.”
Without further discussion, they went into the light keeper’s dwelling. In silence that seemed to grow heavier with each passing minute, they moved around the small residence, checking the empty built-in closets and cupboards, pounding against the walls, which all seemed perfectly solid. The wind picked up, whistling mournfully through the boards across the window, moaning down the chimney. Far, far beneath their feet was the slow, distant pound of the surf hitting the cliffs in phantom heartbeat.
“We should have brought shovels,” Paul said.
“That would have gone over well. There’s no sense upsetting people if we don’t need to.” Finn moved the flashlight over the broken flooring.
“You mean if we don’t find anything?”
Finn studied the moldering earth beneath the broken patches of boards. Yes, Paul was right, they should have brought shovels.
Paul said shortly, “That is what you mean, right? If we don’t find anything, you’re not going to let them cover this up? You’re not going to let them get away with murder?”
Finn stared across the room at Paul’s weirdly shadowed face. “Them?”
“Yes, them. All of them. Are you going to call the police or not? Or do I need to do it?”
“What’s the matter with you?”
“If you killed him…then I understand. I can forgive it. But if it wasn’t you—”
“I told you I didn’t kill Fitch.”
Paul lifted a negligent shoulder.
“I’m not lying.” Finn’s flare of temper caught even him off guard. “And I’m not going to let anyone get away with anything, but you’re not making the call on this. And I’m not doing anything until I’ve thought it through. Until I know what I’m dealing with. And one of the things I don’t understand is why the hell you’re so hot to see Fitch get justice. You hated him.”
“I loved him!”
“You loved him? You sued him.”
The beam of Finn’s flashlight caught tears glittering on Paul’s cheeks. “So what? I was angry and bitter—and jealous, I admit that. But I never stopped loving him. Even when I hated him.”
Finn opened and then closed his mouth. Finally he managed, “Really? Well, you’ve hid it pretty well all this time.”
“What do you know about it? You’ve been moping over Conway Twitty for three years. Which ought to tell you something right there, since I’m pretty sure you thought you hated him.”
That struck a little too close to home. Finn said, “In that case, and since you’re so quick to scream for justice, where the hell were you on the eighteenth of August three years ago?”
Paul gasped as though mortally struck. Tears gave way to astonishment and then outrage. “What are you saying to me?”
“I’m saying…you’re so quick to want to call the cops, fine. Only they’re going to ask you where you were three years ago—especially since, according to you, you were still in love with Fitch. It was one thing when you were an interested bystander, but now you’re a potential suspect.”
“You…bitch!”
“Hey”—Finn shrugged—“I’m just pointing out the obvious. You’re a suspect here too. So before we go flying off to drag the state police into this, I suggest we figure out exactly what we’re dealing with. Because we’re both going to be very unpopular if it turns out Fitch isn’t dead. And if he is dead, we’re going to be even more unpopular—not to mention one of us might end up getting arrested for a crime he didn’t commit.”
Paul stood very still. “You’re turning this around on me to protect Carlyle. He’s the only one who could have done this and you know it.”
“Do you have an alibi or not?”
“I don’t know! I don’t remember where I was three years ago. I might have an alibi. When I get home, I’ll check!”
“Great. In the meantime, let’s keep our mouths shut till we know something for sure. Because right now we don’t know anything. We don’t even have a body.”
“Well, why don’t I go get a couple of shovels?” Paul offered with acid sweetness. He stared challengingly at Finn.
Finn stared back. “All right,” he said finally. “Why don’t you?”
“Do you mean that?”
“Of course I mean it. I already told you I—” He shook his head wearily. “Just…try not to let anyone see you. They’re going to be very upset if they think—”
“Give me credit for some discretion,” Paul said. He propped his flashlight on one of the window shelves and picked his way across the broken flooring.
Finn forced himself to stay where he stood as he heard the car engine fade away. Blackness was not the absence of color. If you mixed every color together, what did you get? You got black. Close enough. So there was nothing to fear in the darkness. No reason to stand here with his heart in overdrive and sweat breaking out over his body, because nothing in the darkness could hurt him. And even if there was something buried in the soft, wet square of ground next to his foot, it could not be Fitch. It was not big enough for Fitch.
He forced himself to stand there for another wrenching second or two, and then he crossed the broken floor and stepped outside. The fog had mostly dissipated; the rain was coming down in a fine misting. But overhead, the sky was heavy and dark with the promise of worse weather, and the sea looked black.
He took a couple of deep lungfuls of oxygen, and then he forced himself back into the cottage. The cottage door swung restlessly back and forth on its creaking hinges, and he propped it open with a large flat rock.
Fresh air, daylight. What more could he ask? Grimly, he took his cane and began to poke it into the soft dirt near the far corner of the house where he thought he had seen an unnatural indentation in the bare earth. The ground was very soft. The tip of the cane slid in deep and struck something—which then gave.
He straightened up, stood motionless, looked to the doorway. It stood open and empty. The door tugged in the wind, bouncing against the rock anchoring it.
Finn looked down at the square of damp earth.
An old rug?
It hadn’t sounded like that. He lowered himself carefully, kneeling awkwardly, scraping at the thing buried in the soft, damp earth.
After a time he stopped, looked around for something else to use as a shovel. He spotted a broken piece of flooring and grabbed that, carving and scraping, digging away as ferociously as a terrier despite the uneasy feeling crawling down his spine. It had to be the cold of the cottage working its way into his bones; he gritted his jaw against the incipient chatter of teeth.
“It’s a suitcase,” he got out, and the sound of his own voice startled him.
He dug more quickly, the wood making a rough whisper against the cloth of the suitcase, and then the suitcase was free and he used all his strength to drag it out of the hole in the floor. He braced a hand against the wall and pulled himself up again.
Hauling the suitcase out into the soft, rainy mist, he laid it on the patchy grass and brushed away rust and mud, struggling to yank the zipper open. The smell of rotted material and mildew wafted up. Inside were a jumble of clothes and odds and ends. Finn recognized the moldy remains of a black checked shirt, a moss green sweater, red briefs, the cotton discolored, the elastic deteriorated.
He touched the shirt—his own. Fitch had borrowed it one day, and Finn had never thought of it since.
At last he closed the suitcase lid and sat there, shaking a little with cold and exhaustion and nerves. He had not really, entirely believed it until now, but there could be no doubt.
Fitch was dead. Murdered.
He was not sure how much time had passed by the time it occurred to him that Fitch had had two suitcases. That meant the other must still lie in the cottage in another corner of wet, cushioning earth.
He forced himself back on his feet and back into the pitchy interior of the cottage. Was it darker than before or was that his overactive imagination?
Not so overactive as it turned out.
Finding his discarded cane, he began to poke again in the spongy sections of bare earth.
From outside came the rumble of thunder. He ignored it, jabbing the metal tip of the walking stick into the moldering earth. It took a while, but on the opposite side of the room, near the doorway leading to the light tower, again he struck something in the soil.
And as he did, a blast of wind, harder than the previous gusts, slammed shut the door to the cottage.
His heart seemed to stop. And then, after a moment of utter, abject, paralyzed fear, it jump-started, speeding back into life.
Finn began to feel his way across the uneven boards, reminding himself all the while that he had a flashlight—two flashlights, for Paul’s still shone from the window shelf—and that his fear was an irrational, foolish thing.
Except that wasn’t right. Maybe there wasn’t anything in the darkness to fear, but Fitch had been murdered—and that murderer could only be one of a handful of people, and they were all still on this island.
He was still absorbing the full shock of that when the cottage door was dragged open again. Instinctively, Finn turned off his flashlight as a black outline filled the doorway.
“Finn?” Con called out.