Cobalt (5 page)

It was impossible to get out through the bar. The doorways were jammed with people watching Joan and Christina. At this late hour, however, the bouncer had unlocked the gate that opened to a flight of steps down to the beach, and they escaped that way. As they trudged away across the sand gleeful cheers and the sound of many more bodies splashing into the pool followed them. Terry had moved to the other side of Valentine and once more slipped his arm about the bartender's waist. Clarisse carefully disengaged herself and moved off a few feet.

They walked toward home down the ribbon of hard wet sand left by the retreating tide. “This is probably a lot more pleasant than Commercial Street right now,” said Valentine. The houses to their left were black tumbled boxes, with only here and there a lighted window or muffled laughter to indicate that the boxes were inhabited. The early morning breeze lifted Clarisse's hair from her shoulders and dried Valentine and Terry O'Sullivan's glistening faces.

“Isn't this romantic?” said Terry O'Sullivan quietly, and squeezed Valentine. “I feel just like Jeanne Moreau in
Jules and Jim
.”

“Actually that would be
my
role,” said Clarisse.

“Oh, look!” cried Terry O'Sullivan, pointing, “it's the morning star!”

“That's a commuter plane,” said Valentine. “Did you lose a contact too?”

Clarisse glanced over her shoulder. The sky was lightening behind them. She made them turn and look.

Crossing the municipal parking lot, they nodded friendlily to the fishermen who were already on the way to their boats at the end of the wharf. Terry whispered something to Valentine, and a moment later Valentine in a resigned voice said, “Clarisse, we're going to hurry along. You take your time, and I'll be up before you have to go to work.”

Clarisse groaned. “I didn't need to be reminded. You two go on, but remember, Terry,” she smiled, “no blood, permanent disfigurement, or toys with combined dimensions of more than thirty-six inches.” She waved them on, and the two men took off toward Commercial Street.

Clarisse continued along the beach. She removed her embroidered slippers, lifted the hem of her gown and walked ankle deep in the cool water. The sky was losing its inky blackness, and behind her was a luminous cobalt. Gulls' cries growing sharply louder cut the morning stillness.

Coming upon a mass of seaweed half in the water and half out, she caught sight of a large starfish lying among the thick greenish-blue tendrils. She wondered if she ought to throw it back into the bay, but couldn't remember whether a starfish could live out of the water for any length of time. She also couldn't recall if they stung, or pricked—or just lay there. When she nudged her foot in the seaweed tangled about it and the starfish did not move, the animal—or was it a plant?—took on the character of a souvenir. Clarisse leaned down to examine it more carefully, closing the eye that had lost its contact lens.

It was no starfish, but a human hand.

Then she saw the bare arm beneath the seaweed and the mound she supposed was the rest of the body.

Clarisse stood sharply, and looked all about her. She saw no one. There were only gulls at her back.

She put on her slippers, and walked hurriedly across the sand toward the center of town.

The Lost and Lonely

V
ALENTINE SAT BLEARILY at the kitchen table, one hand wrapped about a blue porcelain mug of strong black coffee and the other resting in his lap. His fingers repeatedly wound and unwound the sash of his green seersucker robe. He lit a cigarette, pulling closer the already butt-laden ashtray. The window beside him was raised several inches admitting the balmy morning breeze from the courtyard beyond. Rampant ivy spilled through, and he regarded the seeking tendrils balefully. Poor Richard's Buttery was serving Sunday brunch, and he could make out the faint tinkling of silverware from the other side of Kiley Court. He glanced at the other two houses in the compound, but all was quiet, and as much as he could make out, no one was stirring. All three flats had attended the Garden of Evil party, and early rising was not expected of anyone. He checked the wall clock above the refrigerator. It was a quarter past nine and Clarisse still had not returned.

He drained his mug and without leaving his chair reached over to the range for the coffee pot and refilled his cup. A crunching of gravel drew his eyes to the courtyard fence. In a moment the ivy on the trellis was shaken and the unlocked gate was jarred violently to the accompaniment of several loud curses before it rasped open. Clarisse stood framed in dappled sunlight through the coffee tree. Her gown was creased and her makeup had been hastily removed. The silver pins fastened her hair into a ponytail to one side of her neck. She walked across the flagstones in her thin soiled slippers.

Valentine sighed with relief. He rose quickly, filled another mug and set it across the table from him. From the refrigerator he took a walnut coffee ring, retrieved cloth napkins from a cupboard shelf and returned to the table. Clarisse came inside. The screen door slammed against her back and she winced. She kicked off her slippers, pulled the pins from her hair, and performed a little pantomime of plunging them into her heart and plummeting dead into the chair.

They were silent for a minute.

Then Valentine said, “Well, who gets to tell about his night first?”

“Whatever happened to you,” she replied, in a hoarse voice and without opening her eyes, “mine was worse. So you go first.”

“Well,” said Valentine, “when Mr. O'Sullivan and I left you we came directly back here. I was dead. But I thought: we'll have sex, and then we'll go to sleep, and if I'm real lucky, when I wake up he'll be gone.”

Clarisse snorted. “Why didn't you just go on and wish for knighthood, undying fame, and the winning lottery number for the next two years?”

“He wanted to talk. He wanted to talk about relationships in general, and ours in particular.”

“What relationship?”

“You may well ask that question.”

“You should have shoved something in his mouth.”

“I did,” said Valentine. “But he took it out again. He told me he
knew
that story I had told him about my lover getting killed in a bank holdup wasn't true, and he didn't see why we couldn't give it a try.”

“What did you do?” said Clarisse, and still with her eyes closed, groped successfully for the coffee cup.

“I said: we either have sex, or we go to sleep, or we say good-bye. He said: I'm not sleepy, and I can't have sex with you until we resolve some of these problems in our relationship.”

“Problems? Your first date, and you've got relationship problems?”

“Finally I just gave up, and told him it probably wasn't a good idea for him to stay—that I didn't think it would work out.”

“You wouldn't have had any fun in bed anyway.” Clarisse at last opened her eyes.

“He blanched when he saw what I had in the bedside drawer.”

“He should have looked under the bed,” said Clarisse and poked at the coffee cake with a knife. “So after that he left?”

“No,” sighed Valentine. “He couldn't believe I was actually asking him to leave. He wanted to talk it all out. I said: ‘Go away. Don't come back. Don't call. Cancel your reservation. Move to Canada.' But it didn't get through to him until I actually pushed him out into the courtyard and latched the door. And I hate having to be like that. I'm just glad he's not living
here
anymore.”

“He was sweet,” said Clarisse mildly. “But I don't think he entirely understood the way you live your life.”

“So that was the end of my evening. Tell me what happened to you.” He refilled her coffee cup.

She took a long swallow of coffee. “I found a man on the beach last night,” she said.

“Good. After a party like that you shouldn't have to go home alone.”

“You told your story, let me tell mine. I found a dead man on the beach.”

Valentine said nothing.

Clarisse spoke between bites of coffee cake. “I was walking along the beach, and came upon this seaweed, and there was a starfish there—except of course it wasn't a starfish, it was the corpse's hand.”

“So what did you do? Did you heave him—
him
?” Clarisse nodded. “—heave him over your shoulder and carry him to the local morgue?”

She looked at him darkly. “I went to get the police. But first I stopped in the ladies' room on the wharf and took off my makeup. Police never take you seriously if you've got on lots of makeup.”

“What time was all this?”

“Just after I left you. It probably wasn't even five o'clock.”

“It's nine now. What have you been doing for the past four hours?”

“Well, I had to show the police where the body was. And then as long as I was there, I figured I might as well watch. Besides, one of the cops was cute—the same one on the door at the Crown last night. And then they pulled the seaweed off—and lo and behold!”

“What?”

“I knew him.”

“What? You mean it was somebody we know?”

“Someone
I
knew. Jeff, surname King. The one I met getting off the ferry. The one who was looking for a place to stay.”

“Oh yes. Dressed as Cain last night. In a toga.”

“A
chiton
, actually. A toga reaches all the way to the ground.”

“A chiton then. What did the police say when it turned out that you knew him?”

“They thought I did it of course,” smiled Clarisse proudly. “They said, ‘Was this your boyfriend, lady?' For ten minutes I was a prime suspect for Murder One.”

“Wait—he was murdered? I thought he just drowned and got washed up on the sand.”

Clarisse shook her head. “He was strangled. The police could tell that on the beach. Then they took him back to the station, and made me wait, and then they brought me in to look at him for formal identification. There were bruises on the back of his head—but I couldn't see those very well. He might have been hit over the head with a piece of driftwood or something, or maybe he was thrown in the water and hit his head on a piling. Anyway, there were also purple thumb-marks on his throat.”

“Think they'll dust him for fingerprints?”

“They were right against his Adam's Apple. Sort of aubergine.”

“What'd you do, compare 'em against a color wheel? How long did you hang around in there?”

“Not long. But I looked close. After all, how often do I get a close-up of a murder victim? Besides, I was still drunk through most of this, and I had to look at him through one eye because I had lost my contact. The police asked me all sorts of questions, but all I knew was what he told me on the pier: that he was in town for the party, and he didn't have a place to stay. I wonder if I'll get in the headlines?
P'town Corpse Identified by Fashionable Woman Attired as Famous Film Star
. Oh God, how can I face reporters with a hangover like this?”

“What about footprints on the beach?”

“Yes, well no doubt the police are going to make plaster casts of the forty-nine thousand prints down there, and they can be almost certain that the killer's is one of them. And then they'll go door to door like Cinderella's prince, making everyone stick their foot in them.”

“Wonder what this will do to business?”

“I wouldn't worry. The police were pretty blasé. Once they found out he wasn't heterosexual…”

“Figures,” said Valentine. “Well, who do you think did it? Who rolled his credits?”

“The last I saw of him, he had just been cast in the role of The Other Woman.”

“Who were the co-stars?”

Clarisse smiled and paused for effect. “Polyphemus and Ulysses.”

Valentine whistled. “Axel? Scott was up in arms?”

Clarisse described what she had witnessed on the deck of the Crown.

“Did you tell the police about Axel and Scott?” asked Valentine.

“I told them that he had been talking to the men dressed as Polyphemus and Ulysses at the party. I couldn't remember their names. Maybe you ought to call them up, and warn them that the police are out looking for them.”

“You think Scott did it?”

Clarisse shrugged. “Let me sleep on it. I'll dream the identity of the killer.”

Valentine glanced at the clock. “You have to be at work in half an hour.”

“Oh Jesus! I'll have to call in sick.”

“On your first day? Beatrice would be very upset. And you haven't even met her yet.”

“Call her up. Tell her I have Hepatitis-B. Tell her—tell her the truth. I found a dead body on the beach and I'm reeling with grief because it turned out to be my nearest and dearest friend in all the world, and I've got an appointment with the undertaker to pick out the coffin.”

“You can't not show up at work on your first day. Besides, Beatrice wants to explain to you about the merchandise, and then she's going off for the afternoon—you'll
have
to be there.”

“But I haven't slept!”

“Neither have I. Saturday night: you spend yours with a corpse, and I spend mine with a man who proposes on the first date.”

“I
love
Provincetown.” She stood, and began unbuttoning her dress. “Call a taxi and tell him to meet me at the end of the alley in thirty minutes.”

“The shop is five minutes away by foot. With Sunday morning crowds, it'd take a taxi twice that long.”

Clarisse was in the bathroom. As she closed the door, she shouted, “Star witnesses do not walk to work!”

C
LARISSE SAT ON A high wooden stool behind one of the four glass display cases that were arranged fortresslike in the center of the Provincetown Crafts Boutique. Her hair was arranged in an efficient bun; she wore a white silk blouse, dark brown waist-pleated slacks, and sensible low-heeled shoes. It was an outfit she'd thought appropriate for appearance behind the counter of a shop specializing in “rare and beautiful things”—Valentine's words. Her folded arms rested heavily against the edge of the beveled surface; her clouded eyes shifted uncertainly and unhappily about the room. On the back of a receipt book she quickly made a list of four terrible ways for Daniel Valentine to die.