Don't Explain: An Artie Deemer Mystery (17 page)

“Tell me more about Clayton’s father,” Crystal said.

I didn’t want to become enmeshed in local legend.

“So what does everybody think? That he took a powder?”

“I love it when you talk like that.” But it was no use. Crystal was interested. When she gets interested in a thing, she seldom lets go of it.

“Do we know for sure that he wasn’t burned up in the fire?”

“They had experts in. I guess it’s hard to burn up all traces of a human body.”

After a time, we stopped talking about Kempshall and put our arms around each other. She laid her head over on my shoulder. Jellyroll looked back at us from the bow. He was smiling contentedly. This is what I wanted. Was it wrong to want contentment and safety, or just unrealistic?

Suddenly he began to retch. The whole routine: the full-body heaving, the hideous yawn, veined lips curled inside out at the moment of expulsion. Crystal had seen it before. She knew to avert her eyes when the climax came.

There was a man in a dark suit sitting on our porch. He heard us turn around the rocky point at the mouth of the cove, and he stood up, waved. I slowed down and put the binoculars on him. Crystal took the wheel. He was burly and barrel-chested. I really didn’t expect to find the stalker waiting on our porch in a suit. It shouldn’t happen like that. But psychos are not predictable. His light hair was chopped militarily close, his suit blue and crumpled. He had loosened his styleless tie and unbuttoned the collar of his white shirt. He looked like the kind of guy who’d bite your ear off.

“Shelly’s brother-in-law?” said Crystal.

Our detective? He looked more like a detective than Shelly’s brother-in-law. “Do you think we should go on in?”

“What does he look like through the binoculars?”

I handed them to her. She focused. “Tough,” she said.

He took something out of a briefcase at his feet. I couldn’t see what because the picnic table was in the way. He was writing something. He finished and held up the
Cabot County Swapper
,
the local want ads. Across the center fold, he’d penned: SHELLY SENT ME.

I had a little trouble docking the boat against the flat rock this time. While I was back and forthing, Shelly’s brother-in-law grabbed the side of the boat and pulled us in. His wrists were as thick as my ankles.

“I’m Sid Detweiler,” he said. “I thought it was time we met. So I came out. It’s more remote than I thought.”

I could see then that he had been a New York cop, just as Shelly had said. Though they’re of all races and both sexes, New York cops share an aspect, a certain seen-it-all look in their eyes. Maybe they teach it in cop school. It says, I’m a cop, and you’re not, you’re a crime waiting to happen. Even the little cops look the look, but in a big man it’s viscerally intimidating. NYPD’s aspect and attitude are probably not best for the commonweal, but on your side they can be comforting. Sid was comforting. I introduced him to Crystal.

“I saw you play about a year ago, Ms. Spivey, at Amsterdam Billiards. You beat Jimmie Renzi.”

“Call me Crystal.” Crystal was brilliant that night. She beat Renzi for high stakes on pure heart. He was the better player, but Crystal safed him to distraction, then ran balls whenever she had a chance.

“And this is the dog himself. God, he’s cute, all right.” Sid went down to Jellyroll’s level, and they nuzzled. I noticed a faint scar on his cheek that pulled the corner of his mouth downward, making him look sad from that perspective.

But I wondered why he was here. Wouldn’t his time be better spent tracing the stalkers? Unless—he’d traced the stalkers here…I put the question to Sid Detweiler.

“No. At least not that I know of. Why? Do you think they’re here?”

“Not necessarily. Coffee?”

We walked up on the porch, and I went in to brew some coffee, while Crystal told Sid about the launching. After I put the water on, I went back out on the porch in time to hear Detweiler say, “Did she do it?”

After I’d brought the coffee and distributed utensils, Sid said, “I want us to call Shelly right now to verify I am who I say I am. Do you believe I’m Sid Detweiler?”

Crystal said she did.

“Don’t,” Sid said. “I’m a stranger. I came up here by seaplane. That was Shelly’s idea, a good one. It’s at our service on the mainland, if we need it. I’ve been looking around from the air a little bit. It’s remote as hell. I thought it was gonna be like a small town, but it ain’t. It’s damn near wilderness. This is all good, unless you think one of the locals is the stalker. Do you?”

“No. Many of the locals have never even heard of Jellyroll.” Where was he, by the way? He’d left the porch to chase the chipmunk around the woodpile. At least that’s what I’d assumed…I called him. He came around and looked up at me, What did I want that was so important? “Good dog,” I said.

“So we can isolate the strangers. That’s what’s good about being here as opposed to NYC, where most everybody on the street’s a stranger. Here strangers stand right out, you don’t confuse them with the locals, and that’s good.” He dialed Shelly on his own cellular phone, which he took from his beat-up leather briefcase. I saw inside as he did so. There was a black handgun in there. “Shel, it’s me. Yeah, how’s it going? I’m here. Yeah. Shelly, you recognize my voice, don’t you? Security, that’s why. Tell Mr. Deemer—”

I liked this guy Sid. I was glad he’d come. If we couldn’t have Calabash by our side, Sid would do. He handed me the phone.

“Hello, Shelly. Anything up?”

“Did Sid tell you?”

“Tell me what? Did you get another bowling sheet?”

“No. Hype. The stalker story, Artie, it’s out. Nobody knows who got it first or how, but now it’s common knowledge. The tabloid-TV idiots, they’re hysterical. It’s not just that smarmy figure skater. I don’t know how it got out, but it’s out. I got networks calling about movies of the week, already!”

That’s the part that had always frightened me most. Maybe there never was a real stalker; maybe the asshole that sent the bowling sheets was a harmless crank. But now there would have to be a stalker. In America publicity is powerful incentive to kill.

“
Celebrity Sleuth
called me,” Shelly said. “They offered ten grand for the stalker’s phone number. They said we could keep the ten grand even if they didn’t get the stalker at that number.”

That caused spider-foot chills to run up my spine. “Shelly, what do you know about Dick Desmond?”

“Who? Dick Desmond? Dick Des—Oh yeah, it’s coming back to me. He was a tiny talent, a mediocrity, tall, blond hair, had a series—Aw, shit, Artie, the series was about bowling!”

“
Ten Pins
.”

“Yes! Bowling! Is it him? Is he the stalker?”

“He’s here. At least he might be here.” I told him about my encounters with Dick Desmond.

Shelly waited for more.

“That’s it, Shelly.”

“Tell me again.”

I did. I told him about the encounter out by the Disappointments, in the marine supply store, and in the Crack when Lois Lane had insisted the boatman was Dick Desmond.

“Wait a minute, this isn’t Lois Lane, the weirdo?”

“She’s not a weirdo. She’s a brilliant performer.” But it was no use arguing with Shelly about taste.

“She may be a brilliant performer, but she’s still a weirdo. The part I don’t like about Dick Desmond, besides the bowling connection, is the kid taking video of you and Jellyroll.”

I didn’t like that part, either. What good does it do if you kill the cutest dog in the world if nobody knows you do it? There has to be video. “Shelly, do they know where we are, the media?”

“I don’t think so, Artie. I think they’d be there if they did. How’s Crystal?”

“Fine.”

“Give her a hug for me. Look, I’m telling everybody, What the fuck is the fuss? There is no stalker, you’re in New Zealand to help with kangaroo conversation. I’ll call in an hour.”

“Shelly, there are no kangaroos in New Zealand.”

“They don’t know that, the ignorant geeks.”

I returned the phone to Sid, who said, “Okay, tell me all about this Dick Desmond character,” and I repeated what I’d just said. “That’s it?” he said.

“Artie,” said Crystal, “what about the timing?”

“What timing?”

“You saw them out in the water the day after you arrived, right? That was yesterday, right?”

“Yes.”

“Then they couldn’t have followed you here,” Crystal pointed out. “If Desmond and the kid with the video camera are the stalkers, they had to know you were coming here before you got here.”

I thought about that.

But Sid wasn’t ready to jump to conclusions yet. He opened his briefcase and removed an Oglevie flight schedule. “What time did you arrive at the airport?”

“About nine,” I said.

He ran a stubby finger down a column. “There were no incoming flights after that…This Desmond is a stranger to you? Your paths have never crossed in show business? Who knew about the threatening bowling sheets besides the three of us and Shelly?”

“Clayton Kempshall. He owns this place.”

“Who else?”

“Nobody else,” I said.

He looked to Crystal, and she shook her head. “Have you spoken to Clayton Kempshall since you’ve been here?”

“No. He said he was going to Los Angeles. I’ve left messages for him.”

“Where?”

“In New York and L.A.”

He nodded as he jotted something in his notebook. “Is Clayton Kempshall a special friend?”

“No, in fact, we don’t know him very well.”

He glanced at me, then jotted some more. “The point about strangers is still true. They’re gonna stand out, and that’s good. The problem is the Jesus people. They’re
all
strangers, and what with the murder, there’s a press presence, but that seems limited to the mainland. The islands seem to be another world altogether.” He consulted his notebook. “You mentioned that Dick Desmond and his son were on a boat. Did you happen to notice the name of this boat?”

“
Seastar
. From Boston.”

He wrote that down. “How old would you say Desmond’s son is?”

I told him I really couldn’t tell because of the camcorder in front of his face.

Dwight’s boat came around the point.

“Here comes my ride. I like this guy. You told him about the stalker, and he’s looking out for you. This is a straight-ahead guy. You can depend on guys like him. Oh, coincidence. Turns out I know the local law. He retired from the force about the same time I did. This is all good. Don’t you worry. The stalker always has the element of surprise on his side, but he’s going to be fish out of water up here. He’ll stand out like shit in the shower. Well, excuse me, but you know what I mean. This is all good.”

As we went downstairs, Crystal asked Sid what he was going to do now. Sid said he wanted to talk to Sheriff Kelso in person, and he might try to trace
Seastar
, because then “at least we’d know
if this guy really was Dick Desmond. Oh, I almost forgot. Step around here, please.” He led us behind the house near Jellyroll’s woodpile.

Sid pulled the black handgun from his briefcase. But it wasn’t a handgun. My dog danced with joy as if to share his chipmunk game with us. It was a shotgun sawed off short enough to fit in a briefcase. Heartless and black, it had a pistol grip and a single purpose. “I don’t think you’ll need it or anything, but I want you to have this. Just cock it, point, and shoot. Accuracy is not an issue. Thirteen-year-old pulled this on the IRT. And here’s a box of shells.”

I didn’t believe that Sid had forgotten about the gun. I think he meant to size us up before he gave it to us. What did that say about Crystal and me? That we were responsible adults capable of bloody slaughter at short range?

“Are you being well paid, Sid?”

“Shelly’s taking good care of me.”

I put the gun inside the back door, and we went to say hello to Dwight.

“Well,” he said, “we got the sub drained out and back on its stand. And we got the Commander out of there.”

“How’s Edith?” Crystal asked.

“I don’t exactly know. She went off with Roxanne Self. Frankly, it wasn’t a thing she should’ve seen, getting him out of there.”

“Crystal,” I said after we’d eaten dinner and drunk a glass of the wine Crystal had brought, “what would you think if I murdered them? In cold blood. Say it was Dick Desmond, or say it was anybody. Say we knew they meant to harm Jellyroll, but they hadn’t done anything yet. Those are the circumstances.”

“Okay.”

“Then say I killed them both.”

“Before they actually did anything you killed them?”

“Right. Not in a passion of dog defense, but in a calculated, premeditative way, covering my tracks so I wouldn’t get caught.”

“You’d have to dispose of their bodies.”

“That’s right, I would. I could put the bodies in the boat, tie rocks around their necks, and drop them in a hundred feet of water. Bodies never come up around here.”

“They don’t?”

“No.”

“Why?”

“The water’s too cold for gasses to form?”

“What gasses?”

“The gasses of decomposition.”

“Oh…so are you planning to kill them, or is this hypothetical?”

“I don’t know. I was just thinking about what murder would do to our relationship.”

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