Reprisal (15 page)

"Charge you an arm an' a leg." Bobby Moffit got the cap off the glue bottle, bent to apply careful drops to a break in a slender crosspiece. "Busted muntin." More drops of glue. "--ationobody'd want to sniff this stuff ... got no kick to it."

"Right. Will you leave?"

Moffit paused in applying glue. "... Okay. I'll go, and you have a promise I won't bother you anymore."

"Fine. Good-bye, Bobby."

He recapped the glue with some difficulty, put it down, and hauled himself up to his feet. "... Why I came up last night is I heard you askin' about the Bo-Peep--down at Mannin's? I was cleanin' up; I clean up down there. I'm the mop man. An' it's a shame to say so, but I was hopin' for money out of it."

"Money? Money out of what?"

"Out of me seein' her when she went out."

"Seeing her ...?"

"That Bo-Peep boat."

"Are you--you saw my husband that morning?"

"Darn tootin'. Handled her pretty good, too. Not exactly right; he kept her too close, you know. Fat little boat like that, you got to give her some ease off the tiller or she'll walla'. ... Hoped there was some money in it, I'm ashamed to say. Takin' advantage of you, was what I figured to do. Last person saw him alive, I'll bet. ..."

"You saw him in the morning? And it was that day?" Joanna pulled a chair out from the kitchen table and sat down. "--ally're sure it was the day he died?"

"Could I ask you again could you give me just a little money? An' I'll tell you, it kills me to ask it. It just kills me, but I lost my pride."

"I'll--I suppose I could give you something, but how do I know you saw Frank that day? How do I know that?"

"Lady, I do lie, but I'm not lyin' now. Ain't so far gone I don't remember a day a man drowns out there an' don't come back. Had a calm sea an' a south-southwest breeze blowing maybe four, five knots. That was that day. ...

An' your husband was carryin' a beer cooler, too. Blue beer cooler. An' when he sailed out in the bay, he had a boy in the boat with him. Must have took him off that lease dock."

"... Are you--are you saying there was someone with my husband? With him the day he drowned?"

"Darn tootin'. Some kid wearin' a baseball cap. Red cap. Too far to make out who. Some tourist kid, I guess, because I ain't heard no island lady missin'

one. ... Your man was up trimmin' sail. Kid was just sittin' on his ass wearin' that cap. Young people these days don't work at nothin' they can help."

Joanna's heart seemed to accelerate to some music too faint for her to hear.

"You ... Bobby, you didn't tell this to the police?"

"Didn' ask me--an' they wouldn' give me any help with my rent, neither.

Wouldn' help me with groceries--"

"For Christ's sake ...!"

"Wouldn' believe me, anyway. Figure I was just shittin' 'em, wantin' some money. Wouldn' give me any."

Joanna got up, left Bobby Moffit standing, went to the entrance hall and called 911.

A quick answer--"Nine-one-one Island Emergency. Police." The young policeman; she recognized his voice.

"Officer Spruel?"

"Yes."

"This is Mrs. Reed--"

"Right. You okay?"

"I'm fine. I'm just calling to let you know that ... that a neighbor has come over. He's fixing the window for me, and I wanted to let you know you don't have to send Jerry--Jerry Peterson--to do it."

"Okay, Mrs. Reed, I'll cancel that."

"But I do appreciate your help."

"No problem. One of our people will be up pretty soon to take a look at the scene. I'd leave that blood alone up there--blood on your door?"

"I will. I haven't touched it."

Joanna hung up and walked back into the kitchen. Bobby Moffit was down on the floor again, sitting cross-legged on the linoleum, muttering over another join

... squeezing out wood glue.

"A police officer is going to be coming up," Joanna said. Bobby paid no attention. He got his angle to fit--difficult, with the steady tremor in his hands--then fixed the join to cure with a small red-handled spring clamp.

"I brought this clamp with me. ... I didn' take nothing out of your kitchen."

"That's all right."

"Everything I need, I brought right up here myself. Clamp's Charlie's, out of his shop. ... Real lucky, window wasn' double-hung. Just fixed in the frame."

"Bobby, would you ... would you tell the police, the chief constable, what you told me?"

He looked up at her. "Well ... if I did, could you help me with some money? I hate to ask, I really do, but even ten bucks would take the pressure off. An'

if you could go for twenty dollars, you'd have made an unfortunate and weak person very happy. I admit the weakness there."

"Mr. Moffit--"

"Bobby's okay."

"Bobby, if you will just tell the police what you told me, I'll ... tell you what: I'll pay your rent. I'll help you any way I can. I promise that. I promise you!"

"... You know, even ten dollars cash would really help me out. The cash thing is important, an' I promise I won't use it for alcohol. But just ten dollars would really help me out--an' it's a rotten thing to ask a lady lost her husband. I'm well aware what a rotten thing it is."

"Stay right here, Bobby. You stay right here. I'll get my purse." Joanna hurried out of the kitchen ... walked faster and faster to the staircase, then went up the stairs two and three risers at a time.

"I'll be right here," Moffit said to the kitchen, the noise of the lady running through the house. "I'm fixin' it. ..."

Joanna came back into the kitchen, relieved to see him still there.

"--Fifty-three dollars. It's all I have. Or I can give you a check."

Bobby reached up from his work, took the money, then examined it ... shifted the bills in his palm with a forefinger as if it were a currency he hadn't seen before. "That's a lot of money."

"And you'll stay here, and tell the police? There was somebody with my husband; someone sailed with him that morning."

"Oh, I'll tell 'em.--I saw that kid for sure. Skinny kid way out there in a baseball cap. Red baseball cap. Kid was out there just sittin'. Your man was the one doing the work sailin' that boat. Needed to ease her off. You got a broad boat, you need to trim it easy. ..." Mr. Moffit folded the bills, put the money in his shirt pocket, and bent to his work again. He began to murmur softly, what seemed instructions to himself about joining ... gluing ...

clamping. "Sash an' busted muntins is the easy part, an' fittin' the glass is the hard part," he said.

Joanna sat in the kitchen chair again, and tried to imagine Frank befriending some boy at the docks; she tried to see that picture ... see him taking a boy out sailing without checking with his parents. It was difficult to imagine Frank doing that. And if he had, what happened to the boy? "--It doesn't make any sense."

"Huh?"

"Mr. Moffit, it doesn't make any sense.--That a boy went out with him."

"Can't help that. Saw the kid out there, and that's a fact. Your man had that blue beer cooler, an' he had that ... that zipper jacket on. Green jacket."

"Yes. ... Yes, he was wearing that."

Moffit murmured to himself, adjusted the small clamp. "I don't remember everythin'. I do forget some things because of my dependence on alcohol." The clamp was tested, left in place. "--But I remember a man drownin' out there. I remember that day pretty good."

Silence seemed to thump in rhythm with Joanna's heartbeat. Soft beats sounding in a sunny kitchen ... with this sad oddity crouched at her feet. So strange a moment that she felt herself and her kitchen and Mr. Moffit become features of a dream that might last forever--she sitting waiting, the summer light unfailing, the broken window never quite repaired.

Burdened gravel sounded outside her dream, a car rolling into the drive.

Joanna saw the light bar, the cruiser's official white and green. A woman officer, small and slight, stood out of the car, slammed its door shut, and came trotting to the kitchen steps and up them. Her thick-soled polished black shoes seemed too large for her ... the broad black belt, its equipment pouches and heavy, holstered automatic seemed to weigh too much, as if she'd had to wear her husband's shoes and gear today.

The policewoman knocked on the kitchen doorframe with a small hard fist, then stepped inside smiling, a neat, wiry woman in her forties, her narrow face slightly withered from smoking, hair a dyed dark red.

"Mrs. Reed? I'm Officer Lilburn." The smile was a general encompassing smile; the pale-gray eyes were more direct, examined Joanna with little interest ...

looked down at Moffit with no more. "Window busted in last night, right?"

"Yes. About midnight, maybe a little later--"

"But no entrance into the dwelling."

"No, he cut himself ... I guess reaching in to unlock the door."

"Homeowner's best friend," Officer Lilburn said, and squatted to look at dried drops of blood down the inside of the kitchen door. "Homeowner's best friend is untempered glass. Be surprised how many goblins get cut breaking glass."

She leaned forward, looked closer, as if the spatter of blood might speak to her. "Bobby," she said, and didn't turn to look at him. "Bobby, what have you been up to? Been behaving yourself?"

Silence from the floor.

"--I asked you a question, Bobby." She stood and looked down at him.

"Mr. Moffit saw my husband sail out," Joanna said, "--the day he died. He says there was definitely someone with him in the boat. Said it looked like a boy, a boy wearing a red baseball cap."

"He did? Is that what he said? ... Did you say that, Bobby?"

"Yes, I did, and it's true. Long way out, but I saw that kid."

Officer Lilburn smiled and shook her head. "And what day was that, Bobby?"

"Day that man drowned out there."

"What day of the week was that, Bobby?"

"Day of the week ...?"

"That's right. Monday? ... Tuesday? ... Wednesday? What day of the week?"

"Ummm ... Tuesday."

"No, it wasn't. Bobby, was Mr. Reed lost last week, or the week before that?"

Bobby Moffit sat silent on the floor, picked up his work, and rubbed his finger along the narrow wood to wipe excess glue away.

"Bobby, what month is this?"

Bobby put his work down. "I don't see what that has to do with any damn thing."

"What month is it, Bobby?"

"It's summer, goddammit! It's June ... or July. It's early in the damn summer." His hands were shaking; he folded them together.

"Did he ask you for money, Mrs. Reed?" Officer Lilburn was smiling. "Bobby, did you ask this lady for money?"

"None of your business, just because she was nice to me .... My people been on Asconsett when your people wasn't anywhere near here."

"Did you give him money, Mrs. Reed?"

"I did, but I don't think that has anything to do with it."

"Oh, I bet it does.--Our Bobby, here, will do and say just about anything that gets him money for a drink.--Isn't that so, Bobby? You tell the truth, now."

"I never said I was better than anybody else. I have a weakness with alcohol, but that doesn't mean I'm a bad person. Lots of people around here do real bad stuff for money--an' you know that's true. You know what they're doin', an' I know what they're doin'."

"If I were you," Officer Lilburn said, "I'd keep my mouth shut about what other people may or may not be doing.--So, you're saying you just came up to help this lady ... just came up to fix her door window here, and tell her you saw her husband sailing with somebody."

Nod.

"How did you know her window had been broken last night, Bobby?" Officer Lilburn squatted down beside him with a creak of burdened gun belt. She was still smiling, still looked pleasant. "--ally going to answer me? I don't think I need to take a sample of those blood drops dried on that door, do I?

You going to show me your arms, Bobby? Going to let me look at your arms?--where I'll just bet you got cut last night."

"I don't have to show you nothin'. It's not fair. ..."

"Officer, he did break the window last night," Joanna said. "He told me so, and he apologized. He came up to fix it this morning."

"That so? Apologized. ..."

"I wouldn't want to press charges."

No more smiles for Joanna. "Well, that's up to you. Our Bobby's been in trouble before, drinking."

"I'm not a bad person," Bobby Moffit said from the floor, and put his face in his hands like an upset child.

Officer Lilburn sighed and stood. "He's a very sick alcoholic. Been in treatment ... been out of treatment."

"But I think he knows what he saw."

"Maybe ... and maybe not. Trouble is, who's going to know? He said a boy went out with your husband--is that what he said?"

"Yes. A boy ... wearing a red baseball cap."

"Right. But you know, we have no report of a missing young person, or a missing child. We have no report like that anytime the past three months, near-mainland or the islands."

"Maybe that young person isn't missing."

"You saying some youngster could be involved in your husband's death? What boy? Why would he be in your husband's boat at all?--Do you know any such person? Did your husband?"

"... No."

"--And I have to tell you, Bobby is not a credible witness, even if he wanted to be. Even if money wasn't involved."

"Not fair," Bobby Moffit said from the floor.

"Bobby," said Officer Lilburn, "I think you've said enough--and you darn sure have done enough, breaking this lady's window and then coming up here for money to fix it. That's real cute, and it's an offense, a criminal offense."

"Isn't."

"Yes, it is. And even if this lady won't sign a complaint, I can take you in for an examination of your health and competence. And you'll go right to the hospital in Post Port."

"Will not."

"Yes, you will."

Bobby Moffit just shook his head no. He picked up one of the squares of glass, but his hands were trembling so he couldn't hold it. He put it back down, and tucked his hands in his lap.

"What a shame," Officer Lilburn said. "Isn't this a shame?"