Moving Target (14 page)

In the bottom of the box, neatly folded, was a collection of clothing: an old-fashioned three-piece suit of lightweight brown wool. Two of what had been six pearl-colored buttons were missing from the vest. There was a white shirt with what appeared to be bloodstains on the back of the collar and the French cuffs, one of which held a monogrammed cuff link. Other items of interest included a brown-and-yellow-striped silk tie, a white undershirt and a pair of briefs, a pair of brown socks with one toe carefully repaired by a darning needle, and a single brown loafer. It was assumed that the other shoe had been washed out to sea.

Ali picked up the shirt, unfolded it, and examined the bloodstains. Then she glanced in Marjorie’s direction. “What if the bloodstains on the cuffs and on the collar aren’t from the same person?” Ali asked. “The autopsy noted there were defensive wounds on Jonah’s body. What if some of this spatter is from the killer rather than the victim?”

Marjorie Elkins shrugged. “It’s possible,” she said. “Back then, blood was blood. It says in the report that the blood in both places was of the same type—A-positive—but that’s all it says. Without the benefit of DNA technology, there was no way to know much more than that.”

“Has any of this evidence ever been subjected to DNA analysis?”

“Not that I know of,” Marjorie said. “If it had, there’d be some kind of notation in the book. For one thing, the case is sixty years old; so are the samples. They’ve sat in the box all this time, but they haven’t been
refrigerated. There’s no telling how degraded they are. Furthermore, the kind of testing you’re talking about is expensive, prohibitively so. Believe me, no one in my department is going to be willing to pay for it.”

“What if High Noon agrees to pay?” Ali asked. “If I signed a document agreeing that we would be responsible for any costs incurred and gave you my Amex card, do you think you could walk the request through your department?”

“I could try,” Marjorie said, “but I’m not making any promises. How do I get back to you once I have an answer?”

“I’m staying at the Highcliff,” Ali said. “Room 501.”

Marjorie handed over a business card with her name and e-mail address as well as a series of phone numbers. “Here’s how you can reach me as well.”

After returning the evidence box to its designated spot on the shelves, Ali and Marjorie made their way back upstairs. As Ali walked through the lobby toward the front entrance, she was careful to keep her face averted from the watchful clerk. Ali knew she was grinning from ear to ear. It was probably just as well that the clerk couldn’t see it.

B
y the time Ali stepped back outside and into the fading afternoon sunlight, it was almost four o’clock. Out of courtesy, Ali had turned off her phone while working with Marjorie. She had felt several vibrations about incoming messages that she was sure were from B. Still a little miffed at him for dropping his call to her so abruptly, she wasn’t in any great hurry to respond. As soon as she read his message, she felt guilty.

Big DoS problem is slowing down the Internet all over Europe. Some of our clients are adversely affected. I’m on my way to the airport. Have booked a seat on the first flight I can get from Tokyo to Zurich by way of Helsinki. More later. B
.

Ali was savvy enough to know that “DoS” was nerd-speak for “denial of service.” She also knew that if the attack was serious enough that it was hamstringing Internet connections across an entire continent, then it was a huge problem. No wonder B. had hung up on her almost in midsentence. The second message came from Ali’s mother—Edie’s real e-mail account as opposed to the fake one at High Noon. This one showed a picture of Colin looking cute as a button in the pint-sized
tuxedo his great-grandmother had made for him. The third was another photo of a Sedona red-rock sunset and did come from the fake address. The caption said, “Thought you’d want to see this. Dad took it from the back porch. Mom.”

Ali recognized the photo. It wasn’t from her parents’ current back porch in Sedona Shadows, the active-adult community where Bob and Edie Larson now made their home. This was one her father had taken years ago, from their old front porch, with a corner of the Sugarloaf Café’s roof visible between the camera lens and the setting sun. Ali knew it was an encrypted message from Stuart. In order to read it, she would need access to both her thumb drive and her computer. The thumb drive wasn’t a problem—it was safely in the bottom of her purse—but the computer was back in the hotel.

In other words, the message from Stu would have to wait until after tea. She sent B. a message telling him to travel safely, then she went looking for Jordan’s-by-the-Sea. It was at the other end of Bournemouth, at the far southern tip of East Overcliff Drive. Jordan’s was at about the same elevation as the Marriott, but the way to the beach was a steep footpath that meandered down the bluff through a forest of brambles and bracken. The place may have had a view of the sea, but anyone who came thinking they had fallen into a seaside resort was in for a rude awakening. As for Jordan’s current crop of guests? From the six or seven motorcycles parked in the gravel lot, it looked as though the clientele might be a bit on the rough side.

As Ali stepped out of the Land Rover, she was surprised to realize that the weather was still almost balmy, due to the proximity to the water at the bottom of the bluff. She walked through an iron gate and up a paved front walk through a ragged winter garden badly in need of some TLC. The house was a tall and narrow two-story brick affair with a small front stoop. When Ali rang the bell, she was surprised when Daisy herself—at least she was reasonably sure it was Daisy—answered the door.

“We’re completely booked,” she began, then stopped abruptly and
stepped back in surprise when she realized Ali wasn’t some stray traveler ringing the bell in search of a room.

“Who is it?” Maisie called from some other room. “Tell them we’re full.”

Ali took advantage of Daisy’s momentary surprise to horn her way into the entry. “I hope you’ll forgive my dropping by this way, but Leland is back at the hotel, and I wanted to speak to you both in private.”

Maisie bustled into the dining room from what was evidently the kitchen wearing a full-length apron covered with a dusting of flour. Her dour expression was anything but welcoming. “I wish you had called,” she said shortly. “We’re baking for tomorrow morning’s breakfast.”

“This won’t take long,” Ali assured her. “I wanted to ask a few questions, and you’re probably the only people who might be able to provide the answers.”

A subtle shift washed across the contours of Maisie’s face, and Ali knew she had called the right shot. Maisie Longmoor was a gossip to the bone, and talking behind Leland’s back was more of a temptation than she could resist.

“Well, all right, then,” Maisie said, feigning reluctance. “Come through to the sitting room.” Speaking over her shoulder, she told her sister, “Do see if you can come up with a bit of something for tea.”

“That’s not necessary,” Ali said. “Really. I’m not hungry.”

“Go,” Maisie growled at Daisy, and her twin scurried away. That appeared to be the pecking order in this family. Maisie was the commanding officer who issued the orders, and Daisy was the grunt who carried them out.

The sitting room was crowded with furniture far too large for the available floor space. Maisie motioned for Ali to take a seat on an antique sofa that was scratchy enough to be genuine horsehair. The room was dimly lit by a series of faux Tiffany lamps whose yellowish-orange light did nothing for the maroon upholstery.

“What questions?” Maisie asked, taking a seat and making zero pretense of pleasantry.

Since her hostess was being only one step under rude, Ali responded in kind, and her first question was nothing short of accusatory. “Were you aware that until this morning Leland had no idea that his father was murdered?”

“I had no idea,” Maisie said. It was an obvious lie.

“I’m surprised neither you nor your sister made no mention of it when you came to tea.”

Maisie shrugged. “It’s a painful subject,” she said primly. “Having someone in the family murdered isn’t something one goes about mentioning to complete strangers.”

“I may be a stranger,” Ali countered, “but Leland is not. Jonah Brooks was his father.”

“Yes,” Maisie replied, “but he’s been away for a very long time. We weren’t sure how he’d react to seeing us, let alone to discussing something as difficult as his father’s death.”

“You didn’t look unsure,” Ali replied. “From what I saw, you both seemed overjoyed to see him again.”

“All right,” Maisie admitted. “Maybe I was glad to see him, but more out of curiosity than anything else. It’s been a long, long time since he was here last. Even so, I’m surprised he could come back and not be concerned about showing his face to all and sundry, especially after everything that happened.”

“After what happened?” Ali prompted.

Maisie paused. Ali expected her to launch off into a discussion of Leland’s illicit relationship with Thomas Blackfield. She didn’t.

“The war and all that,” Maisie said.

“The war?”

“Yes, dear girl. The Korean War,” she said. “That one’s ours, Daisy’s and mine. We were all too young for the previous one.”

“What about the war?” Ali asked.

Daisy came in from the kitchen, carrying a tray laden with a teapot, cups and saucers, and some tired store-bought cookies. Whatever baked goods were being made in-house were reserved for paying guests.

They’re biscuits here, Ali reminded herself. Not cookies.

Maisie turned to Daisy, who was busy pouring tea. “She’s asking about Leland and what he did doing the war.”

“Oh, that,” Daisy said, nodding.

“What?” Ali asked.

Maisie turned toward her, eyes blazing. “Leland Brooks was a traitor, if you must know. That’s what he did. He may have signed up for the Royal Marines, but the whole time he was over there, he was really selling secrets to the enemy.”

The charge was so outrageous, Ali wanted to laugh outright. “What secrets could he possibly know?” she asked. “He was a cook.”

“That may well be, but Langston had a friend at the War Office,” Maisie said archly. “An old chum from his university days. He’s the one who told Langston about it. The authorities were about to pick Leland up and charge him with being a double agent when he dodged out of town in the dark of night, never to be heard from again. He never once tried to get back in touch with Aunt Adele. Not once.”

“He emigrated to the States,” Ali said. “If there had been some kind of charge like that hanging over his head, he wouldn’t have been allowed to leave this country, to say nothing of being given citizenship in the U.S. And he was heard from again. He wrote to Langston to let him know where he was. Langston told him their father was deceased and that his mother wanted nothing more to do with him.”

“That’s his story,” Maisie said with an audible disbelieving snort. “No one went after him because there was a cover-up. No one wanted to have the fact that a Royal Marine had gone bad bandied about in the newspapers. Once Jonah heard about it, I’ll tell you the man was livid.”

“Absolutely furious,” Daisy offered.

“He was humiliated beyond words to think that one of his very own sons would betray Queen and country. He went straightaway to the family solicitor and had a new will drawn up.”

“To disown his own son,” Ali murmured.

“Yes, and why not?” Maisie demanded. “Jonah was so shamed by
what had happened, he could barely hold up his head in public. If he hadn’t been murdered, I believe the poor man would have died of a broken heart. I remember our mother saying that his dying right then was probably a blessing in disguise. At least it put him out of his misery.”

“What kind of a father would disown his own son without hearing the son’s side of the story?” Ali asked. “How could Jonah take that kind of drastic action on Langston’s word alone?”

“Wait a minute,” Maisie objected, waggling a finger in Ali’s direction. “Don’t you speak ill of Langston. He was a good man; a decent man.”

“Entirely trustworthy,” Daisy added. “We never would have been able to turn this place into a B and B if he hadn’t offered us some financial backing.”

“What you’re telling me is that you believed every lie Langston ever told about Leland.”

“You could take what he said to the bank,” Maisie offered.

“It sounds like you did just that,” Ali observed.

If Maisie noticed Ali’s ungenerous comment, she paid it no mind. “The whole town believed it, why wouldn’t we? And Aunt Adele believed it, too. If you had seen how Leland dodged out of here like a criminal, under the dark of night and without a single word to anyone, maybe you’d understand.”

As though a light had been switched on, Ali suddenly did understand. Leland had left town in the dark of night not because he was a traitor but because he was hoping to keep Thomas Blackfield’s damning secret. All these years later, that bit of subterfuge was still working as far as Maisie and Daisy were concerned.

“What can you tell me about Jonah’s murder?” Ali asked.