Murder at Fire Bay (17 page)

I looked up at the clock: time for lunch. Once again, I forced myself to saunter around the main floor as if everything were hunky-dory. Everybody was quiet.
 

As I went by Martha’s case, she muttered, “How do you like it?”

“Like what?” I answered quietly.

“Little Miss Sweetness has decreed there be no talking on the main floor.”

My heart sank. Crap! There was going to be trouble. All because Little Miss Sweetness, as Martha called her, couldn’t keep her ego in check.
 

I sighed. “Thanks,” I said. At that very moment, I wasn’t sure what I could do about it.

I wanted to trust Martha, to confide to her what Ashley was up to, but for the moment, I decided not to. Hadn’t the Boss said not to trust anyone? It was good advice and I meant to follow it. I exited the back door and made for my car in the postmaster’s slot.
 

As I drove away, I noticed Ralph also pulling out of the parking lot. Again, I tried to recall the voice that night at Ashley’s place. It wasn’t the chief’s. Could it have been Ralph? It had to be someone who was strong enough to drag me to the bed and remove my clothes. Ashley couldn’t have done it; her arm muscles looked too small.

I looked in my rear view mirror and noted Ralph was a block behind. He stayed there until I pulled into the restaurant’s parking lot and then drove on by. Ashley was taking no chances. She was doing her best to know where I was at all times.

Twenty minutes later I bolted out the door after a quick meal of soup and a sandwich. Ralph’s car was nowhere in sight. Good, maybe I had a little time to make my acquisition. I drove over to a hardware store. I had noticed an advertisement for cell phones in the local paper and I meant to have one. Thirty minutes later I walked out of the hardware store, cell phone in hand. For some reason, it was a great morale boost. Some people feel cell-phones are the curse of modern man, but to me it was God’s gift. It would help balance out the evil that swirled about me—or such was my hope.
 

Since I had a few minutes before I would be missed at work, I drove out to a parking area near the beach and watched the waves come in. I took a cautious look around. Good, no Ralph. I slouched down in my seat. It was time to try out God’s gift to man.

“Boss. It’s me.”

“Bronski! Where in hell have you been? I’ve been trying to get in touch with you all morning. You’re going to have to do a better job of staying in touch!”

“Yes, sir,” I answered, all meek and mild, but underneath I was thinking “Dam her!”

“Boss, before we start, I need to give you my cell phone number. Please do not tell a soul I have it, okay? Not even Ashley.”

“Okay, Bronski, I have the number. Now tell me why you have fallen off the wagon.”

“I haven’t,” I said. But I knew my answer was suspect. Ashley’s poison was spreading.

The Boss then told me how I had had so much to drink at Ashley’s party I had to stay the night. “And in front of the town council! Bronski, how could you? Do you know how much harm you did to the Postal Service?”

I then told him what really happened. How I was being blackmailed by Ashley. That she was into the drug scene big time, and that I suspected the local police chief was also. I also told him how I found the package in a trashcan.

“Yeah, I know all about that. Ashley said she found it. Bronski, you can sure tell some whoppers. The computer says she was there on Saturday.”

“I’m telling the truth, Boss.”

“Yeah, well.”
 

Obviously, the Boss didn’t believe me. I regretted giving him the cell phone number. He would use it while I was at the office and I didn’t want that. I decided to change tack.

“Boss.”

“Yeah, Bronski.”

“Can you tell me where Ashley came from?”

“Someplace in Florida, I forget what town. She came highly recommended.”

“I’m sure she was,” I answered.

“Any new info on Gloria?”

“No, I haven’t had time.”

“Well, find some time and stay out of the bars!”

I didn’t answer the last remark. I simply hung up the phone. Let him think what he wanted. Right then, my faith in human nature was at a low ebb. After all we had been through together . . . to think the Boss would believe her and not me. I found it hard to digest.

I sat for a few more minutes staring at the waves, looking for some thought to bail me out of this situation. I yearned for Jeanette and the simplicity of our life at Howes Bluff. I had to tell her about not only my supposed transgression, but also that I had lied to her about everything being okay with Ashley. I took a deep breath and dialed John Crouch at the postal inspector’s office.
 

He picked up the phone on the first ring. “Yeah, Bronski.”

“You know this phone number?”

“I just got it from your boss.”

“We need to talk,” I said.

“Yeah, I bet you do.”

I went on to tell him about Ashley and her attempted blackmail and how the Boss seemed to believe her over me.

“Do you know where she came from in Florida and why she chose to come to a place like Fire Bay?” I asked.

“No, Bronski, I don’t know why she chose Fire Bay. Maybe she wanted to get away from the fast track of the lower-48.”

“Are you going to investigate what I just told you?”

“Maybe,” he said, “but I have to tell you that you don’t look very good right now.”

We said our good-byes and I put the phone back in my pocket. I checked the tape in the recorder in my shirt pocket and headed back to the office.

I walked into the main room and noted again it was as quiet as a man in a closet when the husband has unexpectedly come home. I stopped to talk to an employee, and immediately Ashley came busting out of her office.

“I thought I told everyone to be quiet out here. Oh, it’s you.”

“Yes, Ashley, it’s me,” I said, trying to give her a cold, granite-hard look. And, with that, I headed back to my office, leaving her to stand there on the floor. There were a few snickers in the background.

It wasn’t long after I was back in my office that Ashley knocked and entered. “You took almost two hours for lunch. Where were you?”

“I took my time reading a newspaper. Why?”
 

“Just don’t try anything funny, Leo. Remember?”

“Remember what?” I asked.

She waved her hand and gave me that look of disdain. She hauled out the picture of her leaning over me again. “Oh, you mean the picture of you leaning over me.” I’m sure my face became red.

She bared her teeth in a snarl and shook her head, then walked out the door without saying a word. I looked down at my shirt pocket, but I could see no outline of the tape recorder. But Ashley’s actions suggested she suspected I was trying to trick her into saying something.

Chapter 24

At 5:30, I was sitting on the edge of the bluff with the old man. He was being strangely quiet this evening. There was no slobbery muttering this time. Evidently, he had given up trying to communicate with the dummy that sat beside him. I couldn’t say that I blamed him. I was so lost in my thoughts I was barely conscious of his being there. I wished the day were over, but it wasn’t. I had a reporter coming and then the hardest job of all, calling my wife and telling her what had happened at the party and how I was on the outs with the Boss. Well, it was time to get my man back to the kitchen’s warmth.

“Arness, are you ready to go?”

He struggled to say something, and I thought, oh, no not again. “Short . . . ”
 

There it was, plain as day. Short. I decided he meant we had stayed out a short time.

“Yes, we did stay out a short time, didn’t we? Sorry.”

It looked as though he was going to shake his head, but then he nodded.
 

“Ready?” I asked.

He gripped the sides of the wheelchair and leaned forward. Off we went, with me barely keeping the wheelchair under control as we careened down the hill to the house.

Mrs. Mordant waited at the door with a grimace and raised eyebrow. “Someday you’re going to have a wreck!”

“Sorry, ma’am,” I said, “I guess I do get carried away coming down that hill. I’ll try to go slower next time.”

“Hair . . . ”
 

“Would you listen to that! Dad, you’re doing better!”

Mrs. Mordant wiped her eyes and wheeled him off to his room. I watched them go, thinking about his situation, and how lucky I was to be standing there in one piece.

It was 6:30 by my watch when I heard a knock at my door that I had come to recognize as being Mrs. Mordant’s hurry-up-I-don’t-have-all-day knock.

“There’s a Ms. Jems downstairs wanting to talk to you,” she said, through the door in a voice loud enough to wake the dead. Or was she giving me a chance to jump out the window and make my escape? I was sure Mrs. Mordant knew all about the woman with the buckteeth. I roused myself off the bed and said I’d be right down. After a quick check in the mirror I walked downstairs to see Emily, dressed casually in Levi’s and sweatshirt, standing there in the kitchen.

“Would you like a cup of coffee?” I asked.

“No, thank you,” she murmured.

I knew we couldn’t talk in the kitchen, and talking in my room for very long would raise the town’s eyebrows. There was only one place to go, and that was the bluff. I retrieved my jacket and got a cup of coffee.

“Shall we go?” I asked, hand on the doorknob.

Mrs. Mordant looked aghast. “Why, you don’t have to leave. You can chat in the TV room while I work here in the kitchen.”

Like hell we could. She would have an ear cocked against the door between the two rooms.
 

“Thanks, Mrs. Mordant, but it’s still light. I think we’ll go up to the bluff and go through the interview up there.”

Mrs. Mordant’s eyes narrowed. “I thought from the newspaper article that had already happened.”

“This is a follow-up.”

I gave Emily a quick look of admiration. She had saved my bacon while I was trying to think up something plausible.

“Shall we go?” I repeated, turning the doorknob, hoping we could escape Mrs. Mordant. I could almost hear the wheels turning in her brain. She wanted to know more, but was afraid of going past the line of social politeness. I was beginning to think I had made a mistake telling Emily to come here for the interview. However, we couldn’t be seen sitting in a bar or restaurant or in a parked car somewhere. No, it had to be here.
 

“Just a minute, I have to get my coat,” she said.

She got her coat out of the car and we proceeded up the slope to the top of the bluff. There was still a trace of warmth from the sun dancing on the waves and I thought, Yeah, I could live here. But then, I already had a home elsewhere in Alaska with its own beauty.

“Do you mind if I tape your statement?” she asked.

“No,” I answered, “but we have to lay down some rules. First, I too am going to record our conversation—for my protection—you understand?”

Her raven eyes popped open at this revelation. As if she was just now realizing this was the big time. Lawsuits could result from the wrong thing being said or implicated.

“Also, have you told anyone else about this?” I could feel my left breast vibrate this important question as my recorder hummed and then stopped.

“Yes . . . my editor.”
 

I’m sure my Adam’s apple bobbed at least twice when I heard that last revelation.

“Can he be trusted?”

She smiled that smile of hers. “Yes, I trust him implicitly. He was at the party the other night at Ashley’s house.”
 

I nodded. Great, just great. “What do you think or know of Ashley?”

I turned from the sea to look at her dead on.
 

She returned that look and I saw hurt, vulnerability—name it, and the hurts were there. But hurts or not, there was determination too. This gave me comfort. I had picked the right person to tell my tale.

“She is bright, ambitious and . . . beautiful,” she responded.

I nodded. “That she is, but she is much more. Something akin to evil.”

I started my tale about who I was and where I came from and that I was married to a good woman out at Howes Bluff. I even got a smile when I told about laying in the weeds on the knoll back of the post office.
 

“So that’s why you were not eager for me to report that in the ‘Seen about Town’ column.”

I nodded and brought her up to date about the party and the picture and Ashley blackmailing me. About how my boss wouldn’t believe me.

“Have you told your wife?”

I shook my head and looked down. There was a late-season fly crawling along the ground, making its way toward my shoe. Maybe he thought he would find sanctuary there. I shook my foot, warning him off.