Brandy and Bullets (17 page)

I was asleep within minutes, aided and abetted by the demon rum that hit my stomach, and immediately radiated throughout my body.

“Damn!” I mumbled as the phone rang. “Hello.”

“Jessica. It’s Michael.”

Your timing is atrocious. I’ve had enough of you and your dank, cold Worrell Institute for Creativity for one day. You woke me up.

“Hello, Michael,” I said.

“Am I interrupting my newest professor in the middle of something profound?” he asked. “In the process of resolving a murder?”

“No, you’re not.” For reasons all my own, and unknown to me, I seldom admit to napping. “What can I do for you?” I asked.

“I wanted to congratulate you for a job exceedingly well-done, Jessica. Your seminar was a resounding success.”

“Thank you.”

“Everyone’s talking about it. I sense a renewed spirit in the place. You provided inspiration and, may I add, generated some needed cash flow.” He laughed.

“Happy to hear that. Might I suggest that you use some of that cash flow to boost the heat at Worrell? Or buy a space heater.”

“Reason number two for my call. To apologize for the lack of heat. Heating this splendid mansion is next to impossible. I can see why Jared Worrell was anxious to unload it. At any rate, Jessica, I promise you that for your next seminar, you and your students will be warm as toast.”

“That’s good to hear.” My eyes were heavy; I stifled a loud yawn.

“Reason number three for calling.”

“Yes?”

“I was hoping to avail myself of the rain check you so graciously offered.”

“Rain check?”

“Dinner. Just the two of us. To get to know each other better.”

I didn’t remember having offered any rain check the last time Michael O’Neill invited me for dinner. But maybe I had, as a polite thing to say when declining his invitation.

“Well? How about tonight? While the seminar is fresh in your mind.”

“Impossible. I’m beat, Michael.”

“Tomorrow night?”

“No. I’m about to go into my hibernation mode. I’m behind on my latest book. My publisher is putting on the pressure. I’m afraid I—”

His laugh was meant to be pacific. “I understand, Jessica. Pursuing a professional woman, especially one of your caliber, is never easy. But I’m patient. And persevering. You won’t mind my putting some pressure of my own on, will you? Gently, of course. And never stepping over the boundary of good taste.”

“No. That will be fine. Thanks for calling. I’m glad the seminar was a success.”

I didn’t wish to be rude, but he had crossed the line, in my estimation, between first-time offender to nuisance. Not that I would be critical of his wanting a dinner companion, now that he and his wife had decided to call it quits. But he’d have to look elsewhere for that companion. Frankly, I’d developed a slight dislike for Dr. Michael O’Neill. Nothing specific that he’d done or said. More a matter of being a little too slick, too self-assured, for my taste. I like men who are comfortable with who they are—as long as there is a parallel acknowledgment of their vulnerability.

I was too sleepy to ponder it further. I poked at the dwindling fire, added a few logs that brought it back to life, and went to the kitchen to replenish my hot buttered rum. On the way back, I paused at one of my bookshelves, the one on which books my friends were proudly displayed. One of Norm Huffaker’s two western novels, which I’d replaced upon returning from the seminar,
The Bronze Lady of Bentonville,
caught my eye, as though beckoning me to choose it, and to pull it down from its perch.

Its cover was bold and colorful, with a beautiful Indian maiden watching two dashing men on horse-back gallop toward her. Norm’s nom de plume, B. K. Praether, was in large white letters.

I carried the book to my chair, opened it, and read his inscription to me:
“For Jessica
—
One step in hopefully becoming half the writer you are. Love. Norman.”

I suffered a twinge of guilt at never having read this particular book. I’d read his other western,
The Redemption of Rio Red,
and enjoyed it. There was a time early in my career when my attitude toward western novels was that they were a lesser genre, not for serious readers. Until, of course, I matured and realized that a good story is a good story, whether it’s set in the old West, or contemporary Manhattan. Norm was a good storyteller. That he chose ten-gallon hats and spurs, rather than three-piece suits, for his characters was irrelevant.

It was during this intolerant, opinionated period of my life that I considered writers who wrote under pseudonyms to be cowardly, not willing to subject their real selves to the possibility of harsh criticism. Then, during a particularly productive year in which I turned out three books, my editor suggested publishing one under another name. “Too many books in too short a time by a single author can be counterproductive,” he’d said.

And so Cynthia Syms was born. I felt in good company: Writing as Barbara Vine certainly hadn’t done Ruth Rendell any harm. Nor had Evan Hunter suffered writing under his Ed McBain byline. Cynthia Syms’s book didn’t sell as well as those under my name. But years later. when it was reissued, the cover noted that it was J. B. Fletcher writing as Cynthia Syms. That edition did quite well.

I once asked Norman how he felt about not having his real name on a book. “As long as my real name is on the check,” he’d replied. Hard to argue with that level of pragmatism.

As I browsed
The Bronze Lady of Bentonvilie,
I realized how good a writer Norm really was, even at that early stage of his career. The writing was tight, and spare. His characters were colorful and three-dimensional, his action scenes stirring. It was hard to imagine him dead; his writing was so alive.

My sleepiness had abandoned me. I was wide-awake. I added more logs to the fire, propped a yellow legal pad on my lap, and started making notes, beginning with the assumption that Norm was alive. If so, what might have really happened?

He went to the bridge, left the BMW idling, then departed the scene rather than jumping into the river.

Okay.

But how did he leave the scene?

Where did he go?

And why would he have done such a stupid thing?

 

Fifteen minutes later, Jake Monroe knocked at my front door. I was already dressed in my outdoor gear.

“Where to on this frigid night, Mrs. Fletcher?” he asked.

“Believe it or not, Jake, the Old Moose River Bridge.”

Jake frowned. His heavy salt-and-pepper eyebrows formed question marks.

“I know, I know,” I said. “Sorry. Hopefully, this will be the last time. I just have to check something out.”

Jake nodded. “The Old Moose River Bridge it is,” he said.

The road crews had done their usual splendid job of keeping the roads clear. We reached the bridge quickly. Jake and I got out and peered over its railing into the thick white mass below. Frozen. Everything was frozen, including my breath. Where there was once—and would be again—a strong current of clear, fresh water, there was now at least six inches of ice, with a blanket of snow on top. Spring was a long way off, especially in Maine, where it is preceded by what’s known as Maine’s “fifth season”— mud season—and usually arrives a day or two before summer officially begins.

Hard to believe, I thought, my arms wrapped tightly about me, a stiff wind off the river stinging my nose and cheeks, that the frozen water would once again host white-water rafters, with their yellow float jackets and gleeful faces.

“Where do rafters in summer park their cars?” I asked no one in particular.

“Mostly down there,” Jake answered, pointing in the direction of a small cleared area that could accommodate three, maybe four vehicles.

I allowed my mind to drift back to summer and the sight of rafters navigating the tricky currents of the river. Dozens of them. On some days even more.

“This is the starting point for white-water rafting, isn’t it?” I asked.

“Ayuh. Most of ’em pick up the river here. Go all the way down to Fillerville. Them’s that make it, that is.”

I walked to the end of the narrow bridge and looked to a path that meandered down to a tiny beach of sorts at the river’s edge. The rafters usually came down that path in order to enter the water. But where did they all park? Certainly not on the bridge itself. It accommodated only one car at a time in each direction.

I asked Jake.

He laughed. “Don’t you remember all the flap about them parking over to Jimmy’s Store Twenty-four? Jimmy raised a big stink about that. Tried to band his parking lot, but they just kept findin’ ways to get around it.”

“Yes, I remember now,” I said.

Jimmy’s Store 24 was a typical catch-all store: bread, milk, magazines, and the like. When he first started the business, Jimmy stayed open twenty-four hours a day. But that didn’t last long, especially in winter. Now, he opened when the spirit struck him, which on certain days—especially when he had an “aidge-on” from too much whiskey—resulted in not opening at all.

“How far would you say Jimmy’s store is from here?” I asked Jake.

“’Bout a quarter mile.”

“Not very far.”

“That’s for certain. That’s why so many people park there, even if they aren’t buyin’ from Jimmy’s store. That’s what got him so upset. Remember?”

“Yes, I do. An easy walk from here, even in a snowstorm.”

My mind went into overdrive.

Suppose Norm was alive. Suppose he faked his death, for reasons still unclear. How did he pull it off? He could have left the BMW idling on the bridge, then walked to Store 24 where he had someone waiting for him.

Another possibility presented itself to me as I stood on the Old Moose River Bridge. Norm might have been picked up after leaving the BMW. He might have hitched a ride. Hitchhiking hadn’t fallen out of favor in Maine to the extent it had in other, more urban parts of the country. Lots of locals pick up anyone with a protruding thumb, provided the hitchhiker isn’t foaming at the mouth, and carrying a submachine gun. In a sense, hitchhiking is the closest thing Cabot Cove has to mass transit.

But it was unlikely that someone would have been driving that night, especially down by the river.

Which meant that if Norm had been picked up, it could have been by prearrangement, in which case someone in Cabot Cove knew about it, and perhaps even knew where Norm had gone—and why.

“Jake,” I said, “isn’t there a gas station next to Store Twenty-four?”

“Ayuh.”

“And a car rental agency that recently opened?”

“Right again, Mrs. Fletcher.”

Maybe Norm rented a car there, I thought. If he did, he might have driven it to—an airport.

A sudden burst of frigid wind came up off the river, whipped around me, and came at my face with an icy slap. I gave myself a bear hug. “Let’s go,” I said.

“Back home?” Jake asked. It sounded more like a plea.

“No, not just yet. First, I need to stop off at Store Twenty-four for something. Okay?”

“Fine by me,” he said. “I could use a cup of coffee.”

“Sounds good,” I said. “My treat.”

“I need to check in on the agency anyway,” he said.

“Check in? Agency?”

“Ayuh. Can’t imagine business is much good in dead of winter. Never should have bought into the franchise. Might sell my stake come spring.”

“What stake? You’ve lost me.” We’d climbed into his taxi.

“Rent-a-Wreck. The one by Jimmy’s store. Bought into it just last summer.”

“That’s good to know,” I said, smiling.

“Why? You don’t drive, Mrs. F.”

“I didn’t realize you needed to know how to drive when you rent a wreck.” I said.

Jake laughed. “You’ve got a good point there,” he said. “Let’s get that coffee.”

 

We were served by a surly young woman manning Jimmy’s store, and took our cups into the office of Rent-a-Wreck. It was closed. How fortunate that Jake owned a piece of it, and had a key.

He turned on the lights. It was as cold inside as it was out. Jake flipped a switch on a floor heater. “Should get livable in a couple of minutes,” he said.

“Don’t worry about it,” I said. “I’m used to it.”

“What now, Mrs. F?”

“I’d like to see your rental records for the day the blizzard hit. The day Norman Huffaker disappeared.” I gave him the date.

“Suppose I can find those records,” he said. “Not sure where to look. Don’t pay much attention to what goes on here, ’cept for whether it made any money. Hasn’t lately.” He started rummaging through dog-eared boxes of files. “Never cared how things worked here. Like I said, I was hopin’ it would help me and the Mrs. retire someday.”

“I’m looking for a rental to Norman Huffaker.” I spelled his name.

“Gottcha.”

“And it’s between us,” I said. “Whatever we come up with.”

“Gottcha, Mrs. F.”

After a few more minutes of pulling pieces of paper from the files, Jake held up a batch. “These here are from that day,” he said. “Let’s see. Huffaker. Huffaker.” He perused each rental receipt. “Nope. I don’t see anybody with that name, for that day. Only rented eleven. Looks like I’d better count on drivin’ instead of retiring.”

“Could I take a look myself?” I asked.

“Sure can. Hope you have more luck than me.”

I flipped through each rental agreement with my index finger, like an Evelyn Wood speed-reader. The records were dirty, smudged, dog-eared. Some names were virtually illegible.

No Norman Huffaker.

But then during a second run, my finger stopped, as if the agreement were written in braille.