The Kind Worth Killing (20 page)

“I had a couple days off and I've never been up here, so I thought I'd treat myself.”

“Well, yah picked the perfect place. There are spa services here, but they're not walk-in. You need to call ahead. Dining room's closed tonight, but the Livery's open down in the cellar, and the food's just as good, if you ask me. Try the lobster BLT. And I'd be happy to recommend nearby restaurants. Do you need someone to show you to your room?”

I told him I didn't, and climbed the narrow stairwell to the second floor. The view from my room was a narrow slice of ocean past a cluster of huddled trees on the bluff across the road, but the room was
nice, with dark blue walls, Shaker-style furniture, and a four-poster bed with an actual red-white-and-blue quilt on it. I wondered, of course, if this were a room that Ted and Miranda had stayed in. Had they slept together in this bed?

I unpacked my bag. I had told John at the front desk that I would be staying for two nights, but I had packed clothes for more than that. I would play it by ear. The room was too warm, the radiator clicking and hissing, and I opened the window, standing there while the cold air spilled over me. The low clouds were thinning as the afternoon wore on, and I could make out the lengthening shadow of the inn as it stretched across the road. It would be dark in less than an hour. I had planned on walking the cliff walk but decided that I could do that the following day. I left the window cracked and lay down on the soft bed. The ceiling was crossed with dark beams, and I imagined Miranda in this room staring at the same view. I pictured her alone, naked under the sheets, thinking about the two men in her life—her husband and her lover—and plotting murder. I tried to think of Ted, but my mind kept slipping toward Miranda. Was it possible that I was wrong about her, and that Ted had really been killed by a surprised burglar? I didn't think so but knew it was a possibility. It was the first thing I needed to find out, and the reason why I needed to meet Brad as soon as possible.

Miranda flooded my thoughts. I remembered her from years ago, staring into my eyes that drunken night at St. Dunstan's. She had wanted to study them, she said, and I'd let her. I could smell the sweet trace of vodka on her breath, and one of her hands was touching my wrist. She told me all the colors she could see in my eyes. I wondered at the time what she was up to. I thought that it had to do with Eric, that she was trying to spook me, since I was now going out with her ex-boyfriend, but now I wonder if it had something to do with me. What had she seen in my eyes? Had she seen Chet at the bottom of that well? A commonality that went beyond Eric Washburn?

Some guy whose name I've forgotten had yelled, “Kiss, already,” from across the room and we broke eye contact, but I've never forgotten that moment. I wondered if she remembered it, too.

I stayed in the room until a little after five, then changed into my tightest jeans. I pulled my hair back into a ponytail, and put on more makeup than I normally used, including dark eyeliner. After dinner at the Livery, I was planning on checking out Cooley's on the beach, and I needed to look the part.

The Livery was quiet when I took a seat at the bar. The bartender, a dyspeptic-looking giant in suspenders and a tie, was cutting lemons and limes, and a waitress was wiping down tables. The bar area was long and narrow. At one end was an unlit fireplace, and at the other, a man with long gray hair was unpacking an acoustic guitar, and setting up an amplifier. I hung my purse from a hook beneath the oak bar and ordered a bottle of light beer. Football highlights were playing on the TV mounted above the bottles, and I pretended to be interested. I wondered if anyone would show up on a Sunday night, but by six o'clock, as I was nursing my second beer, at least fifteen customers had arrived, most of them taking seats at the bar, and the man with the acoustic guitar had already sung two Eagles songs. I hadn't eaten since breakfast and ordered a turkey burger with sweet potato fries. Just as it was arriving, John, the hotel concierge who had checked me in, sat down two stools over and ordered a Grey Goose martini.

“Hello, there,” I said, swiveling my barstool fractionally in his direction.

I watched his eyes hunt my face. I knew I looked quite a bit different from when I had checked in. After a long second, he said, “Hello, guest with no reservation. How'd you like your room?”

“It's lovely. You were right.”

“Didn't bump your head going through the door?”

“Almost.”

His drink arrived, the vodka forming a trembling meniscus at the
brim of the glass. “Now, how do you expect me to drink this?” he said to the bartender, who, without a word, plucked up a small black bar straw and dropped it into his martini. John lowered the level of the vodka a quarter inch, then flicked the straw back toward the bartender, who let it bounce off his chest and fall to the floor.

“Nice to leave your job and be able to go less than a hundred yards to get a martini,” I said.

“I wasn't kidding when I said how good this place was. See what a great advertisement I am, drinking at my own place of work.” His laugh was almost like a giggle, his shoulders hitching up and down.

We chatted while I ate my burger, and he worked his way through the martini, adding ice as he drank it. I was about to give up any hope that I would stumble into gossip about Ted and Miranda, but when John's second martini arrived, he asked, “You said you were from Boston?”

“No, but Massachusetts. Winslow, about twenty miles west.”

“Did you read about the murder in the South End? Ted Severson.”

“I did. It was a home invasion or something, right?”

“Right. He was building a house up here, just about a mile up the road.” He pointed north with one of his large, meaty hands. “They stay here—stayed here—all the time.”

“Oh, my God. You knew him?”

“I knew him really well, and Miranda, his wife, she practically lived here the past year.”

“She did live here,” said the bartender, breaking his silence. “She was down here for dinner more nights than she wasn't.”

“Has Sidney heard yet?” John asked the bartender, and I noticed that two young women down the bar had stopped talking to each other and were now paying attention to our conversation.

“I don't know, but I'm sure she has. It's gone all over town.”

“Is the house finished?” I asked, wanting to keep myself in the conversation.

“No, not yet,” John said. “If you walk to the end of the cliff walk
you can look at it. It was going to be huge. Little bit of an eyesore, I thought, but don't quote me on that.”

“What do you think will happen to it?”

“No idea, really. For all I know, Miranda will finish it and move up here.”

“Oh, she'll definitely move up here.” This was from one of the two women eavesdropping. They were both in their twenties, one in a sweatshirt from UNH, and one in a windbreaker and a Patriots cap. The woman who spoke, the one in the sweatshirt, already had a raspy voice, as if she'd been smoking for all her young life.

“You think so?” John asked.

“Yeah, I mean she practically lived up here anyways, and she was always talking about how much she loved it, and how awesome the house was going to be, and on and on. She's from Maine, you know. Orono. I mean, maybe she won't want to move into such a big house now that her husband's dead, but I just wouldn't be surprised if she came up here. She can live anywhere with her money.”

“Why was she up here all the time if the house wasn't finished yet?” I asked.

John answered. “She was supervising. She said she practically designed the place. Her husband used to come up weekends. We all knew him really well.”

“What was he like?”

“What was he like? He was nice but a little distant, I guess. Everyone felt like they got to know Miranda really well, and Ted not so much. Maybe just because she was here so much.”

“Also, Miranda always bought drinks for the bar and Ted never did.” This was from the woman with the Patriots cap, and as soon as she said it, her face went pale as she remembered that Ted had been murdered. She covered her mouth and said, “Not that . . .” and trailed off.

“Were they rich?” I asked.

Everyone in our little knitting circle of gossip immediately reacted—the two women each saying “Oh yeah” in unison, John
exhaling loudly, and the bartender nodding his head in one slow, exaggerated motion.

“Filthy,” John said. “You should walk down the cliff walk tomorrow and see the house. You won't be able to miss it. It's got something like ten bedrooms. I'm not exaggerating.”

The solo guitar player broke into “Moonlight Mile” by the Stones, and my new friends talked about how rich Ted and Miranda Severson were. The woman in the hooded sweatshirt used the word “gazillionaire,” while John said they were “very well off.” I went to use the restroom, and when I came back the two women were putting coasters on the necks of their Bud Light Limes to go out and smoke cigarettes, and John had bought me a new beer.

“Since we're gossiping,” I said, sliding back onto my stool, “it seems strange that she spent so much time here at a hotel without her husband. You don't think she was seeing anyone?”

John stroked one side of his handlebar mustache. “I don't think so. She always seemed thrilled when Ted came up.” A slight chilliness had entered John's voice, as though I'd possibly asked one too many questions.

“Just wondering,” I said. “It's so sad.”

I stayed for a few more beers. John left after his second martini and I slid over and joined the two women, introducing myself. Their names were Laurie and Nicole, and both were waitresses, one at a fish place in Portsmouth, and one at the dining room of another seaside hotel two miles away. Sunday night was their going-out night. All they wanted to talk about was Ted and Miranda, the tenor of the conversation alternating between respectful and salacious. By eight, the Livery was nearly full, and another couple, friends of Laurie and Nicole, had joined us. Mark and Callie were in their thirties, also in the restaurant business, and a lot of what had been said about Ted Severson's murder was repeated after they sat down. I stayed and mostly listened. I'd already decided that I wasn't going to Cooley's till the following night. Even though I had been drinking
light beers, I'd had too many, most of them bought by my new friends, and I felt too drunk to trust myself in a conversation with Brad Daggett.

As it neared closing time, and as the group got louder, I asked again about the possibility that Miranda was screwing around up here in Maine.

“I don't think so,” said Laurie, who had designated herself the closest-to-Miranda in the group. “If she was, then I don't know when she was doing it, because she was only ever here at night, and she always went straight up to her room at the end of the night. No, I don't think she was doing anything up here. I mean, slim pickings around these parts.”

“Yeah, there is,” Nicole said.

“No offense, Mark. You're taken, but seriously, I doubt it.”

“She's fucking gorgeous, though. It makes you wonder,” Mark said, and his girlfriend, Callie, nodded heartily in agreement, as did Nicole and Laurie.

“Was she?” I asked.

“Oh, my God, yes. She was like model gorgeous. Totally hot.”

“She must have gotten hit on?”

“If she'd gone other places, sure. Like Cooley's. But not here, not really. This is not exactly a pickup bar.”

“Sidney would've picked her up,” Callie said.

Again, they all reacted, nodding their heads. “Yeah, Sidney's obsessed,” Laurie said. “Lily, Sidney's the bartender here most nights. She was totally in love with Miranda but, you know, that only went one way.”

I learned nothing else, and when the bar closed at ten, I went back to my room, got into the boxer shorts and T-shirt that I slept in, and slid into bed after loosening the sheets. I couldn't sleep if my feet were tucked completely in. I turned the bedside lamp off, and the room became intensely dark, a blackness that I wasn't used to. Where I lived in Winslow was quiet, but my street had streetlamps, and my bedroom was never completely dark. I tried to think of Ted,
but the blackness of the room made me remember where he was now, and as I wound down into sleep, it was Miranda that kept entering my consciousness, her eyes an inch away from mine, her touch on my wrist becoming a grip, her sharp nails growing like talons and digging into me.

That night in Orono—after eating bad take-out Chinese food and watching my mother struggle to ask me questions about my dead husband instead of telling me about her pathetic life—I lay in the undecorated guest room on a twin bed that was the only piece of furniture in the room. The walls were a horrible lemon chiffon white, and even in the dim light from the streetlamps outside, I felt oppressed by their tackiness.

I was wide awake, still worrying about Brad and his ability to keep his shit together, and still wondering why Ted had gone to Winslow on the day that Brad had killed him. I'd been saying the name—
Winslow, Winslow
—all day to myself. I was still sure that I knew someone who lived there. Clearly it was someone Ted knew as well, and I wracked my brain, going through all of our friends, to try and figure it out. So far, nothing.

I chewed at the skin around the nail of my thumb until I tasted blood, then made myself stop. I thought of getting up, going downstairs to look for the cigarettes my mother was pretending she didn't
have, but knew that if she heard me, she'd come out of her bedroom and yak some more. Instead, I tried to masturbate, the only sure way I knew of getting myself to sleep. I pictured blank-faced men, as I always did, but their faces kept getting replaced by Ted's or Brad's and I eventually gave up, resigned myself to a sleepless night. I stared at the ceiling, and at the occasional fan of light that wheeled over it when a car passed outside on the road.