Mudlark (24 page)

I laughed. "If you're feeling brave enough, come over for a cup of coffee. Tom and I are sitting here
B.S.ing about the murder."

"Bob McKay's the killer." She hung up.

A minute later the doorbell rang. I let Bonnie in. She heard our speculations with bright-eyed interest.
She admitted that the random pinching of derrières was not
prima facie
evidence of wider guilt, but
she stuck by her conviction that the murderer was Bob McKay.

Tom said, "I think he's too inert to come up with a complicated plot. I'm surprised he had the energy for
an affair. Cleo could be a demanding lady."

Bonnie scowled. "We defer to your deeper understanding. I still say she told him to kiss off, so he killed
her in a fit of macho angst."

Tom winced. "If 'macho angst' is a sample of your style, I hope you stick to satire."

"What would you call it? 'The pangs of disprized love?'" Bonnie sniffed. "If a man kills a woman, he
doesn't love her, whatever nonsense he may whine later."

"I wasn't objecting to the idea, just to the linguistic hash."

"English
is
linguistic hash," Bonnie said with dignity. "That is its charm."

I felt obliged to defuse the literary argument, so I told them about Bob's alibi.

Bonnie groaned. "I don't believe it."

I took a sip of coffee. It was cold. "Jay says they haven't found anything yet to make them doubt Annie's
word."

Bonnie crossed her eyes. "She's just standing by her man."

At that point it occurred to me that I had blabbed confidential information. Jay rarely discussed cases
with me. If he found out I had blurted what he told me at the first opportunity, he'd clam up for good. I explained
that to Tom and Bonnie, and swore them to silence, adding, "Of course, we're not being fair to Bob."

Bonnie gave another groan.

"You and I haven't seen Bob sober," I insisted. "We don't really know what he's capable of. If the
McKays covet your land, Tom, that gives him a double motive, though, and it explains why Bonnie's house was a
target, too." I summarized for Bonnie what Tom had told me about the accreted land.

Bonnie shook her head. "I don't own beachfront, just the lot the house stands on. The original owners
kept the dunes to the west of me. I even let them hold back a strip on the south side of the house for an access
road."

"So you're not a major property owner. Another theory down the drain." Tom took his cup to the sink
and rinsed it out, suiting the action to the words. He leaned on the counter.

"I say Annie's lying. Bob killed Cleo."

"And got shit-faced so we'd think he was too stupid to function? Come on, Bonnie." Tom was
amused.

"He got drunk because he was haunted by remorse." Bonnie said the cliché with relish. She
cocked her head. "Want to spy on the McKays, you guys? The Show of Homes starts tomorrow. Annie invited you,
Lark."

Tom backed off, theatrically, hands up. "Count me out. I'm going fishing."

"Coward."

"Absolutely."

"Are you crewing for Henry LaPorte?" I asked.

"I owe him. He's expecting a boatload of tourists from Portland. They come down every year for the
Buoy 10 season."

I'd heard of the Buoy 10 season. It involved sports fishing for salmon at the mouth of the Columbia, and
it ran for a very limited period. The Kayport Jaycees gave prizes for the largest catch of the day and week. The short
salmon season was almost as great a magnet for tourists as the equally limited razor clam season along the ocean
beaches.

"I thought Mr. LaPorte was a commercial fisherman."

"He is, most of the year, but he bought a small charter boat about ten years ago when the commercial
runs started to decline. He does a lot of business hauling sportsmen these days."

"And you're going to bait their hooks and hold their heads when the going gets rough," Bonnie
jeered.

Tom grinned. "Do you know what they call tourists out on the river?"

"Something demeaning, no doubt."

"Pukers," Tom murmured. "Water's choppy crossing the bar."

Bonnie and I exchanged looks. Bonnie said, "I think I'll avoid the river. What do you say, Lark? I'm
curious about the Enclave, and I doubt that I'll get an invitation to tea there any time soon."

I had nothing scheduled for the next day, and I was curious too. Maybe seeing how they lived would
help me understand the McKays. They seemed stranger to me even than Cleo and Donald Hagen. I found it difficult
to envisage either Annie or Bob committing murder in the first person, yet they were obviously key players in the
melodrama. "When are the houses open?"

"Ten until four."

"Let's go early then."

Tom yawned. "Speaking of early, I'm going to bed. I have to be at the dock by four thirty.
A.M
."

Bonnie shuddered.

I heard gravel crunching outside on the driveway. A door slammed. "That can't be Jay already. It isn't
even nine." Hospital visiting hours ran from seven to nine.

It was Jay, however. I took one look at his face, and my light mood dissolved. "What is it?"

He pulled a chair and sat heavily. "Lottie's dead."

My stomach lurched. "Oh, no."

He reached across the table and touched my hand. His was cold. "I'm sorry, darling."

I swallowed hard. "So am I. You liked her a lot, too, didn't you?"

He closed his eyes.

Tom came in from the kitchen and took a chair beside Jay. "How's Matt? Did you see him?"

Jay opened his eyes. "Yes, I saw Matt. He's at the hospital under sedation." He cleared his throat. "Dale
had to order an autopsy. There's a possibility Matt killed Lottie."

Silence pooled in the bright room.

Jay shook his head as if to clear it. "He's babbling confessions. Nothing Dale can use as evidence, of
course."

"You mean Matt said he killed Lottie?" Horror tightened my throat. I barely got the words out.

Jay nodded. "And Cleo Hagen."

I was too numb to react, but Bonnie sat up, eyes wide.

Tom drew a sharp breath. "That's impossible."

Jay turned and looked at him. "Why?"

"He didn't know my...Cleo. Why would he kill her?"

Jay smoothed his mustache. "He said she deserved to be executed because she was an evil woman,
because she was destroying the environment, because her resort was going to block Lottie's view of the ocean." His
hand dropped. "I heard him, Tom. He hated Cleo Hagen almost as much as he admires Annie McKay. He said he
wanted to do something to help Annie's cause."

"That's crazy," I objected, but the objection was mechanical.

"Matt is...disturbed." Jay sounded incredibly weary.

I scrabbled for hope. "Then he may be making it all up?"

"Maybe, maybe not. He has some of the physical details right. Either he knows things about the murder
that didn't make the news, or he's a good guesser." He turned to Bonnie. "He said he dumped the dead sea gulls on
your porch and trashed your house. That part's likely to be true. According to Dale, the lab thinks the printing on
the note is Matt's. They compared it with some form he filled out for the county." The muscle in his jaw jumped. "At
my suggestion. Dale told me that before the call came from the hospital."

I was appalled. "You suspected Matt?"

"I suspected him of the carpetbag. He certainly had the opportunity. Apart from us, he's closest to
Bonnie's house."

That was true. I shivered. Matt could have vandalized the place while we were off gawking at Tom's
fire. He was lurking by our driveway when I walked home.

Bonnie had gone white. "That nice old man."

Tom ran his hands over his face. "Do you believe his confession?"

Jay shoved his chair back and rose. "I don't want to. If I believe him, then I have to believe he may have
murdered his wife to keep her from giving me evidence of what he'd done."

I cleared my throat. "If Matt killed Lottie, which I do not believe, it was mercy killing." I said that, but it
didn't fit what I knew of Matt. He'd been too determined to care for Lottie himself, too blindly optimistic about her
condition.

"Maybe." Jay didn't sound convinced. "In any case, I should have gone in to the hospital this afternoon."
He walked out through the kitchen, touching my shoulder briefly as he passed. I heard him go upstairs.

"Shit." Tom got up, too. "Matt and I used to swap cuttings. And Lottie--" There were tears in his eyes. He
shook his head. "I can't take it in. G'night."

When he had gone, I looked at Bonnie. She was wiping her glasses on a Kleenex.

I felt as if I had sunk to the bottom of a dark pit, though the kitchen was, if anything, too bright. I wanted
to cry, too, but I felt more like throwing up.

When I had seen Bonnie off, I went up to our bedroom and held Jay. We both cried.

After a while we talked, too. I had to make him see that Lottie's "message" for him was purely
conjectural. It hadn't crossed my mind that she might want to tell Jay something incriminating about Matt. If she
had wanted to see Jay, it was because she liked his attentions.

Before her second stroke and hospitalization, Lottie had enjoyed receiving company. She had been
pleasant to me, but she was the kind of woman who blossomed in the presence of a personable man. Jay flirted
with her in a mild way, talked to her about local events, described his work. She had drunk it up. She had probably
just wanted more of the same.

And Matt? Matt was obsessed with taking care of Lottie. If he had said he killed her, it was because she
died while he was with her and he wasn't able to save her. I convinced myself that she couldn't have seen anything
worth reporting to a policeman. I don't think I convinced Jay, but at least I gave him another way of looking at the
tragedy.

Matt couldn't confess to the shooting. That was one good thing. We knew who the villain was.
According to Jay, Matt hadn't claimed he was the arsonist, either. He had confessed to Bonnie's incidents and to
Cleo Hagen's murder. And to killing his wife. That was all. That was enough.

Around ten, Jay's mother called from L.A. They talked briefly, mostly wordless murmurs and grunts on
Jay's part. I gathered they were talking about Donald Hagen. When I asked what Nancy had told him, Jay shook his
head. More confidential information.

The phone call interrupted our talk halfway through. Jay finally fell asleep around eleven. I lay beside
him, staring at the ceiling and turning the meaning of Matt's confession over in my mind. Freddy drove up at
midnight. When I heard the rental car roll onto the gravel, I slid out of bed. He usually raided the refrigerator
before he turned in for the night.

I met him at the back door.

"What's happening?" He sounded goofy and looked blissful. Darla's good mood must have survived the
film.

"Tom's asleep. He has to get up early. Go on up to your room. If you want a sandwich, I'll bring one up to
you."

"Good deal." He tiptoed past me and scaled the stairs with only a few thumps. I made a salmon
sandwich, poured a glass of milk, and carried the snack to his room.

When Freddy fled Stanford, his mother shipped him north. He brought his infatuation, his clothes, the
Trans Am, and his personal computing station, which was very high tech. He installed the PC and accoutrements in
the bedroom we gave him, in case the urge to 'pute should overcome him at, say, three in the morning. Sometimes
it did.

He sat in his padded office chair and dived into the sandwich. I perched on the foot of his bed and told
him about Lottie and Matt. He said the correct phrases, but he hadn't seen much of the Cramers. Their tragedy
didn't impede his appetite.

When I wound down and blew my nose, he blinked at me like an owl. "It's sad, I know, but I don't think
he killed Mrs. Cramer, Lark. That's just survivor guilt."

I sniffled. "Good heavens, what do you know about survivor guilt?"

"Well, see, when Dad died, Mom had gone out to lunch with a friend. She'd been with Dad all the time he
was in the hospital, and the nurse said to go ahead because he was stable, so Ma went out to lunch and my father
died. She felt awful."

"I didn't realize--" My voice trailed. Freddy's father, Alf, had not got along with Jay, so we hadn't visited
very often. We had attended the funeral, of course, but I hadn't thought a lot about the effects of Alf's death on
Nancy. Or on nineteen-year-old Freddy. Why would a bright kid flunk out of college in his senior year?

His round face was pink with earnestness. "I had to talk her through it. My psych professor explained it
to me."

I said, "I hope you're right. Matt seemed so devoted to Lottie. That makes the idea of his killing her
twice as shocking, I suppose."

"Killing that real estate woman is something else. He could've done that for sure." He finished the milk
in one gulp.

I was silent. By then I had had several hours to digest the idea of Matt murdering Cleo Hagen. After the
first fierce denial, I had begun to sift what I knew of Matt through the sieve of possibility. He had seemed strange
lately, obsessive. I remembered his adulation of Annie McKay, his outrage over the resort, his moments of mental
confusion, his verbal tics.

Matt had been under stress for a long time. I could visualize him going for a walk on the beach after he
put Lottie to bed. I could see him stumbling across Cleo if she was there waiting for Bob. I could imagine them
exchanging words, Cleo laughing at the old guy, Matt picking up a piece of driftwood. I didn't think Matt had killed
Lottie, but he could have killed Cleo Hagen in a burst of rage.

I said good night and left Freddy to his computer. I fell asleep picturing Matt, his mild face contorted
with fury, his wire-rimmed glasses gleaming in the moonlight as he raised his driftwood club again and again.

I didn't hear Tom the next morning--or Jay, either. When I dragged myself out of bed at seven, Jay had
gone for a long run on the beach. I found coffee and a note saying he'd be back soon. He must have had nightmares.
Running was a way of coping with them. I thought about running myself, but I felt too limp to go upstairs and
change out of my sweats.