Cape Refuge (8 page)

 

S
o tell me again why you were at the dock this morning fighting with your in-laws?” Joe McCormick asked Jonathan when the door closed.

Jonathan watched the detective smooth his hand over his shaved head. He had his foot propped on a chair and was looking down his nose at him. A little power was a dangerous thing, Jonathan thought.

“I told you,” he said. “We've been all through this. Melinda Jane can read it back to you.”

Melinda Jane wiped her nose with a wadded tissue. “Want me to, Joe?”

“That won't be necessary,” Cade said.

“The rumor is that you gave them an ultimatum,” McCormick said, dropping his foot to the floor and pacing to the window. “What was that ultimatum?”

“I told them that either Gus had to go or Morgan was quitting and we were moving out.”

Cade, who sat on a folding chair in the corner of the room, lifted one eyebrow. “Would she have done that?”

Jonathan rubbed his face. “I don't know. It was half bluff. I figured I'd worry about that later. I was hoping they'd just ask him to leave. But they said no, they weren't going to let Gus go. I couldn't believe it.”

“And then it escalated into a yelling fight,” Cade said. “One witness said you yelled that if they didn't take care of it, you would. What did you mean by that?”

“Just what I said. That I'd take Morgan and move out.”

“So you got pretty mad at them,” McCormick said. “Were there any blows thrown?”

Jonathan looked up at him like he was crazy. “No, there were no blows thrown. I raised my voice a little, that's all. Several people heard it and got all bug-eyed like they'd just witnessed something real important. And I stormed down the pier and got on my rig.”

McCormick's eyes narrowed. “Jonathan, tell us what happened when you brought your rig back.”

“Well, we cleaned up, got the boat put to bed,” Jonathan said. “And then I had to rush to shower and shave before the city council meeting.”

Cade slid his chair closer to the table and leaned on his elbows. “So you were at the city council meeting when they started talking about Hanover House?”

“Right,” Jonathan said, “only Thelma and Wayne weren't there. So I took off looking for them.”

“Where did you go first?” Cade asked.

“Well, I went by the house, but no one was there.”

“Did you go out to the toolshed?”

“No. I haven't been out there for several days.” He slapped his hands on the table. “Look, I know I'm a hothead. I lost my temper this morning. I yelled a little too loud. It's my wife we're talking about. I didn't want her around some ex-con who claims he's found God. I was afraid of what he might do. Maybe I was wrong to do and say what I did, but you can't arrest me for that.” He stood and leaned across the table, his eyes fixed on McCormick's. “And think about it. Why would I use my own speargun if I was going to kill them? And why would I be so stupid as to toss the gun into the water before I left?”

“Maybe you panicked. Not thinking,” McCormick said.

Jonathan turned to Cade. “You can't seriously think I'm capable of this.”

“Jonathan,” Cade said, “you've been known to have a violent temper before. I remember once before you married Morgan, when you kicked Thelma and Wayne's toolshed until the thing toppled over.”

“I was mad because they wanted her to wait a few months before marrying me. Hey, I rebuilt it, okay? It was a building, not a person. I've never been violent with people.”

“You've put your fist through walls,” Cade added. “Did that at camp. Almost got sent home.”

“I was fourteen! Give me a break! What are you gonna do? Haul me into court and tell them you think I killed my in-laws because I lost my temper in eighth grade and tore up a shed once?”

“I don't see how we can release you,” Cade said.

“You're going to
lock me up?
Cade, don't you realize my wife just lost her parents? She needs me. If you've ever cared anything about the Owens—”

“I have to do my job,” Cade said. “I don't like it, Jonathan, but I can't take any chances right now.”

“I did
not
kill them,” he said. “Ask my deckhand. I was in a bad mood this morning, but I got over it. I didn't have blood on my mind when I went out this morning or when I came back. I've had fights with Thelma and Wayne, but we've always gotten over it. There were a lot of things about them I didn't understand, and they weren't always willing to explain. But I loved them just the same,” he said. “They were good to me and good to my wife. And they wound up with the best-built shed in town, and you know it.”

Despite his efforts to hold his emotions back, Jonathan's mouth trembled. “What's this town going to do without them?” “What's going to happen to Hanover House? The whole island is going to change. Not to mention the fact that there's a killer running around. And if you ask me, his name is Gus Hampton. You're going to at least question him, aren't you, Cade?”

“Of course we're going to question him, Jonathan. We're going to question everybody. But meanwhile, we're going to hold you here.”

“Cade, you can't. You can't put me in jail and give my wife something else to grieve over.”

“Morgan has Blair,” Cade said. “She can help her through it.”

“And who's going to help Blair?” Jonathan asked.

“Blair Owens is the strongest woman I know,” Cade said.

“Oh, yeah?” Jonathan asked. “See if
you
don't have nightmares tonight, and then ask yourself what it would be like to see your own parents that way.”

Cade looked down at his hands. “Come on,” he said. “I'm going to have to book you and put you in a cell.”

“And suppose the real guy gets arrested. Suppose somebody finds out who really did it. You've only got two cells back there, Cade. What are you going to do? Don't you have any drunks or shoplifters in there?”

“Nope. Just some temporary residents waiting to be questioned.”

Slowly, Cade got to his feet.

Jonathan wanted to kick the chair over, head-butt his old football buddy, put both fists through this particular wall. Instead he got up, seething quietly, and followed Cade out of the room.

 

M
organ thought they might be letting Jonathan go when they brought him out of the interview closet. “They're locking me up,” he whispered. “Honey, I'm so sorry.”

“No,” she wailed. “Cade, what are you trying to do?” She stepped back and looked at the chief. “I'll bail him out,” she said. “How much?”

Cade shook his head. “I can't set bail, Morgan. Only the judge can do that, and it's after hours. He's not in his office.”

“Then I'll call him at home.” There was only one judge on the island of Cape Refuge—a forty-eight-year-old ex-hippie who still wore his gray hair in a ponytail. His name was Randy Simmons, and she knew him well.

She grabbed the phone book and flipped through until she came to the name
Simmons.
Quickly she dialed his number.

“Nancy,” she said when his wife answered. “Nancy, it's Morgan Cleary. I need to speak to Randy.”

“Morgan,” his wife said, “I heard about your parents. Oh, honey, you must be just upside down with grief.” Nancy sounded sweet as honey, but Morgan knew she was only after something to run in the newspaper she published, the
Cape Refuge Journal
.

“I need to speak to Randy,” she said again. “Please. Put him on the phone.”

“He's not here right now,” Nancy said. “Are you all right?”

“Where is he?” Morgan shouted.

“Well, he's at soccer practice. He coaches Jimmy's team, you know. And they're over at the soccer field down by the school.”

“I need to talk to him real bad,” Morgan said. “Nancy, do you think you can get in touch with him?”

“Well, I guess I could drive over to the field and tell him to call you.”

“Does he have a cell phone with him?”

“No, honey, I'm afraid not,” she said. “You know how it is out here. You can't get a signal no matter what you do. He's thinking about getting one of those satellite phones, but he hasn't done it yet.”

“Then, yes, would you please drive over and get him? I really need to talk to him. It's an emergency.”

“Well, where can he reach you, hon?”

She closed her eyes and tried to think. She couldn't stay here. She had to go to Hanover House and tell the tenants in case they hadn't heard already. She had to go back to the scene and sort through everything. She had to find out what they were doing with her parents' bodies.

“I don't know,” she said. “I'm at the police station right now. Look, Nancy, just tell him that I need for him to set bail so I can get Jonathan out. They're holding him for no reason. He did not kill my parents.”

“Oh, my,” Nancy said, in that southern drawl that sounded so innocent but packed such punch. “They've arrested Jonathan?”

“When you publish that in your newspaper,” Morgan said too loudly, “tell them he didn't do it. He's innocent—they were just looking for somebody to blame. But meanwhile, they'd better realize that there's a killer running loose on this island.”

Morgan slammed the phone down. Cade had already taken Jonathan back to lock him up. She felt so helpless that she wanted to break something.

She heard the cell door bang shut and echo throughout the building, then Cade reemerged.

“He'll be all right, Morgan. Just have faith.”

“I do have faith, Matthew Cade,” she spat out. “Where's
your
faith? You know Jonathan is a Christian, that he could never kill anybody. You're members of the same church. You worship together, pray together. How can you lock up your Christian brother like that?”

“It's not easy,” Cade said. He came toward her and put his hands on her shoulders. This time she didn't shake him off.

“Don't worry about him,” he said. “He's going to be all right. But Morgan, while you're here, I need you to answer a few questions too.”

“Me? You suspect me too?” she threw back.

“No, of course not. But we need to retrace their steps. I need to know what they were doing today, who they talked to, what they said the last time you saw them.”

“All right,” she said. “I'll tell you whatever I know.”

He took her into the interview room, where Melinda Jane still sat with her stenotype machine. She was dabbing at her eyes with her tissue, and Morgan wondered whether she was crying over how they were treating Jonathan or over the death of her parents.

Cade had barely closed the door when she started talking. “They had a regular day, Cade, like any other day. Except that Pop said something about meeting with somebody before going over to City Hall. They said they'd tell me about it later. I should have demanded to know.”

“Oh, honey,” Melinda Jane said. “You didn't know. How could you know?”

“Melinda Jane,” Cade warned, and she got back to her work.

“Morgan,” Joe McCormick asked, “what do you think about Gus Hampton? Is Jonathan right about him?”

She leaned back. All she had to do was tell Joe something negative about Gus, something that would cast him in a bad light and get Jonathan out of trouble. But she couldn't. It wouldn't be true.

“My parents knew Gus was an ex-con. They weren't harboring him illegally at all. He came here, a broken soul trying to start over, and they gave him a place. I've seen them do wonders with him,” she said. “I've seen him transformed. I don't think he killed my parents, but I don't know who did. All I know, Cade, is that you won't find him by sitting in this building.”

“We're looking,” Cade said. “As soon as we find him, we'll bring him in.”

He questioned her further about her parents' activities of the day: people they called, places they had gone, things they had said. When she had told him everything she knew, he finally walked her back out to the front door.

“I appreciate your help.”

She wiped her eyes. “I want you to find the killer,” she said. “I'll cooperate in any way I can. But I want my husband out of here.”

“I know you do,” he said. “Morgan, you just go do what you need to do, take care of yourself and Blair, and let me take care of this.”

“Right,” she said, and turned away from him. She started to the front door, opened it, and stood at the threshold. “My parents would want me to forgive you,” she said, “but it's going to be hard when this is all over.”

“I know it is,” Cade said. “I'd have trouble too. Believe me, Morgan. This is the hardest thing I've ever had to do.”

She pointed at Cade, her finger trembling. “You protect my husband. Whoever did this, whoever stole his speargun and set him up, might have it in for him too. So help me, you'd better protect him, Cade.”

Sobbing into her hand, she headed back out to her car.

 

A
cross Cape Refuge, Blair stood in front of the warehouse, fighting nausea. Someone had brought her car over from City Hall, so she got into it and sat behind the wheel.

Alex Johnson, one of the police rookies, came to her window. “You okay, ma'am? Sure you can drive?”

“I'm fine,” she said. “I'm going to follow the hearse and see that my parents get there safely.”

The absurdity of her words struck her, and she looked away, fighting despair. What could happen? Could the hearse run into a tree and kill her parents all over again?

She started her car and pulled off the gravel, following the hearse back across the bridge to Tybee Island, then to the causeway that led into Savannah.

Morgan would say that her parents were in heaven, that their souls had ascended instantly, that they would never be unsafe again. But Blair couldn't buy it. She had trouble buying into anything that she couldn't see and feel and taste. If it couldn't be explained with physics and chemistry, if you couldn't look it up on the Internet or find it in a book, spelled out all nice and neat with foolproof formulas and definitive explanations, then she couldn't accept it.

But that created a problem. That meant that her parents were no more, that she would never see them again, that the last time she had seen them, sometime yesterday, had been a farewell and she hadn't even known it. What good had it done them to be so spiritual and so godly, only to have their lives end so cruelly?

She didn't cry, didn't even blink back tears, as she followed the hearse into town. Even so, sorrow crushed her with such heaviness that she almost couldn't breathe. There were too many things her parents had left unsaid, too many equations that hadn't yet been solved.

She had known for years that she hadn't been told the whole story about those red, hideous scars on the side of her face, which repulsed the men who were attracted to her other side. Her parents had insisted as long as she could remember that she had been burned as a baby when a grease fire erupted in their kitchen. The story had made sense when she was a child, but as she'd grown older, she had begun to recognize their evasions about the fire and their reluctance to talk about it even when she'd pleaded for details. She had had screaming arguments with her parents, demanding to know the truth, but they had insisted they had told her everything there was to know. She had left home in a fit of anger, taken the job as the town librarian, and set up her own house. Eventually, she had gotten over that anger, trying to convince herself that her parents would never lie to her.

Her mother had once told her she was lucky to have the scars, that the man who finally fell for her would see her inner beauty and the outside wouldn't matter. Her mother hadn't meant it in a cruel way, but it had felt cruel to Blair.

Even so, Blair agreed with her mother. She was
glad
she hadn't been caught in the whirlwind of dates and dances to which Morgan, with her delicate beauty and gentle spirit, had seemed enslaved. Blair had always had more important things on her mind. A man would have just held her back.

She could get through this night and this grief without one. She was strong. She was intelligent. And if she could just get back to Cape Refuge and lock herself inside her office at the back of the library, somehow she would be able to figure out who the killer was. Then everything would make sense.

 

 

A
t the funeral home, Blair followed the hearse around to the covered area at the back door. She sat frozen in her car, watching through the windshield as they took the bodies out and carried them in, as carefully as if they were still alive.

She thought about the last time she had come to this place, when Roland Ball died of a heart attack at forty-two, leaving behind a wife and three children.

“What do you say to somebody who's going through a thing like this?” she had asked her parents as they walked across the parking lot for the visitation.

“You just hug them,” her mother had said. “Tell them you're sorry. Scripture sometimes helps, but that's better for after the funeral, when you can write it down so they can look at it when they're ready.”

“What good does Scripture do?” Blair asked. “Seems a little shallow, to bombard hurting people with platitudes when they're at their lowest point.”

Her father, who had been walking a few steps ahead, stopped midstep and turned to face her. “Blair, you know better than that. Scripture is not platitudes. It's life.”

“Not for Roland Ball.”

“You're wrong about that too, darlin'. He does have life. His wife'll see him again.”

“And what if you're wrong?”

“Oh, Blair,” her mother had said with genuine despair in her eyes.

Her father got that look in his eyes that she had seen so many times, when he witnessed to a lonely dockworker or an aimless ex-con. It was easy for her to understand why people responded to him so as those soft, doleful eyes fixed on her. “The better question, Blair, is what if
you're
wrong?”

She wasn't wrong, she thought now as she watched them close the door to the hearse. If there was a God, he would have rescued her parents from the evil that defeated them today.

The driver of the hearse saw her car and started toward her. She rolled her window down.

“Ma'am, is there anything I can do for you?”

“No,” she said. “I . . . I'm coming in . . . just as soon as I get back with some clothes. Please . . . don't touch my mother.”

He leaned down and set his arm on her window. “Ma'am, we have to touch her.”

“Don't . . . dress her, I mean.” She swallowed, wondering why the words came so hard. “She's very modest. She hates it when people see her dressing. Even in department stores, she makes me stand in front of the dressing room door and hold it shut. But it's okay. I can do it.”

“Ma'am, the medical examiner needs access to them. Let us take care of things. There's enough for you to do.”

She stared through her windshield, and focused on an azalea bush at the edge of the parking lot. The pink blooms had all wilted. Someone needed to pinch them off, so that new ones could grow back. She didn't know why people left wilted blooms.

She looked back up at the man. “I told you,” she said, her voice louder now. “I don't want you to touch her. What about that don't you understand?”

“Ma'am, you're upset.” He spoke like one would speak to a rabid tiger, circling and growling, waiting to pounce. “Maybe you'd like to come in and sit down, and I can explain the process to you.”

“I told you, I have to get her some clothes. Him too.”

“It's no hurry. You can bring them later today or even tomorrow.”

She couldn't understand why the man was so obtuse. Her knuckles whitened as she clutched the steering wheel. “I will bring them today, and I will dress her myself, and if you so much as open a button on her shirt, I will get a lawyer and sue you for everything you're worth!”

He nodded then. “Yes, ma'am. We won't touch her, then. We'll just wait.”

“Good.” She sat there staring at him for a moment, wondering where she would direct her anger now. She shifted into “drive.” “I'll be back.”

She didn't wait for his response, just rolled up the window and pulled out of the parking lot.

The drive home seemed longer than it ever had before, and when she finally crossed the bridge to take her back to Cape Refuge, she felt the sudden chilling sense that there was nothing here for her anymore. Still, she navigated her way through her town until she got to the little library. It was on the west side of the island, just north of the dock.

Her home and her library sat side-by-side among pine trees and mimosas, across the street from the water.

Next door, Sally Hanfield's Marine Museum sat, sharing an empty parking lot. She hoped Sally wasn't there . . . she couldn't deal with questions and pity.

She hurried to the library door. She had closed it a little early today so she could make the city council meeting, and she walked in and locked the door behind her. For a moment she stood there, breathing in the scent of the books and the dust.

She shouldn't have come here, she thought. She should have gone to Hanover House to get the clothes. She should have hurried back to the funeral home, as she had said she would, to attend to her mother's body.

She stood frozen, running faces through her mind, wondering who on this island had the potential for murder. Maybe Jonathan had done it. Maybe it was someone else running free on the island waiting to do it again. Maybe it was revenge, or just plain evil.

She stood there a moment, staring into space, while all the questions reeled through her mind like microfiche from the back room. Anguish bled into trembling rage, bubbling up, boiling over, shaking her . . .

Finally, she erupted. She grabbed the edge of the bookshelf in the center of the room—and pulled it over.

The books hit the ground first, and then the wooden structure crashed to the floor. She grabbed another set of books, knocked them off the shelf. One shelf at a time, she pulled the books off, then kicked the shelves over. Rage played out of her in violent form, book after book, shelf after shelf, crashing on the hard floor, wreaking havoc on the little building she kept so carefully. Vintage books, antiques, out-of-print books that no one could ever find anyplace else, all went flying in clouds of dust. Shelf after shelf—books landing open, facedown, pages flapping. Every last one crashed and banged.

It sounded like justice. Like broken dreams. Like flattened hopes.

Like she was murdering that thief, Death, who had robbed her of her parents.

She had to upend every one. Destroy them all. Every last one.

Then maybe she could cry.