His place was like one of those survivalist homesteads
you read about, in Utah or Wyoming, where they are
preparing for nuclear winter. The pantry was loaded
with labeled glass canning jars, a clean quarter inch of
wax showing at the top of each: jams, jellies, and preserves.
On a shelf over the soapstone sink, next to a
neatly organized array of veterinary supplies for the
animals, I spotted a CB radio set hooked up to run on a
battery.
"He came up to tell me Reuben was ... gone,"
Mike said. "See what kind of reaction he got from me,
too, I'll bet."
"Why would he do that?"
His laugh was mirthless. "In case I killed him, I
guess. As if I'd waste my time on that little--"
"Until just recently I had no idea that you even
knew Reuben," Ellie said.
Mike got up, put the kettle back onto the wood
stove's cook top. "Well, I did. Twenty years ago, I was
his ..."
Not his friend, surely. Mike was in his mid thirties
or so, no older. Which would have made him--
"Mascot, I guess you'd call it. Sidekick. Or pet. He
was a lot older than me, in his late teens." He glanced
fondly at Molly as the child, who had vanished somewhere,
came back in again.
"Sit down, honey," he said. "Eat some
gingerbread, and work on your plant hanger. We're going,"
he added, "to a crafts fair, and Molly's bringing some
of her things to sell."
Molly ignored the snack, seating herself at the table
and concentrating on one of her projects. Her deft
fingers spun long strands of string swiftly and cleverly,
knotting them to form an intricate pattern in macrame,
threaded with wooden beads.
"She knows all the macrame knots, don't you,
honey?" Mike said proudly.
"That's very nice," I told her sincerely, and her
smile was lovely. She was the spitting image of her
mother.
Ellie was explaining to Mike more about why we
were asking about Reuben Tate. "Would you rather
discuss it somewhere else?" I put in, indicating Molly.
He considered. "Honey, if you're not going to eat,
take that stuff upstairs." Silently, the little girl obeyed,
grabbing the cleverly knotted string plant hanger.
Then: "Reuben was a sickness," he said when his
daughter was out of earshot. "It was like he somehow
put a spell on me. I was fascinated by him at first. His
wild ways."
"Later," Ellie drew him out for my benefit, "you
married ..." With a nod at the photo, he mentioned
a name I didn't recognize. A good mother when she
could be, Mike said. A cook in the merchant marine, so
she wasn't around a lot. They were divorced.
"I got custody," Mike said. "She agreed to it. I'd
been in a little trouble in the past, but not anymore. No
time for getting stoned when you've got a kid to take
care of."
Molly's mother had been in town, in fact, on the
ship that had come into port the previous Friday evening,
the Star Hoisin, Mike said. She had come to the
cottage, taken Molly on a couple of outings.
Which explained a bit more about why the child
seemed a little withdrawn and weepy now. He didn't
elaborate on the reason for their divorce and I didn't
ask. It was Reuben I wanted to know about.
"So you hung around with him as a kid. He liked
you. He never bullied you or hurt you? That wasn't
exactly his usual behavior, from what I've heard of the
way he operated back then."
A look of regret passed over Mike's plain face. "I
wouldn't say he never bullied me. Like I said, I was a
little kid he could ... I don't know. Own, almost.
He wasn't abusive sexually if that's what you mean,"
he finished.
It was. I still didn't understand the attraction, on
either side. "How did you end your relationship with
him?"
He looked sharply at me. "I didn't end it. He left
town. I grew up. Life went on. And that was that."
"He came back," I pointed out. "Several times, according
to what I've heard. He didn't try to get in
touch with you then?"
"Well," he temporized, "he did, the first few times.
But I was married, and then we were pregnant with
Molly. I didn't give him any encouragement, so he lost
interest. Went on," he added, "to bigger and better
things."
His laugh didn't sound convincing. "So how come
Bob Arnold wanted to talk with you," I asked, "after
Reuben got killed?"
He poured more tea. "Not many people remembered
about me and Reuben. You know, it was just one
of those little-kid phases. But I guess Arnold recalled,
and you know him. God forbid he shouldn't cover all
the bases. And something about the way he talked to
me about it, I had a feeling he wouldn't be the last one
dredging up old stories."
Resentment tinged his voice briefly, went away
again. Wade had remembered it too, I recalled, so
probably Mike was right.
"But for me, what's past is past and that's the end
of it. This was twenty years ago, remember. Like I told
Arnold, in my book Reuben Tate was ancient history."
Not pleasant history, from his expression. But he
didn't seem to mind talking about it. "Can you think
of anyone who might have wanted to hurt him?" I
asked.
Ellie had wandered outside, carrying her tea. Now
she came back in and went to the window, where a
profusion of houseplants flourished like an indoor jungle.
Peering through the glass, she gazed out at the domestic
animals and the gardens.
Mike looked rueful. "Oh, there were plenty of
those. Open the phone book and point. Reuben was
mean ... and he was smart."
Everyone said so. "In what way? Knowing how to
hurt people? Their weaknesses?"
He nodded emphatically. "And how to get some
advantage out of them. Just for instance, the only jail
time he ever served, it was six months for breaking and
entering. Before," he added, his tone even, "he stopped
getting sent to jail, because no one would testify
against him, here." That matched what Paddy had
said.
"Most guys," Mike said, "when they get out of
jail, they have nothing more than they went in. It's just
empty time. But not Reuben. When he got out he had a
list of homosexual professional men in Maine. Dentists,
lawyers ... anybody he could blackmail."
Ellie glanced over from the window, peered back
out again. Something in the yard seemed to have fascinated
her.
"But I don't understand," I said, shocked and revolted
at the idea. "How would such a list even get
compiled?"
He shook his head. "I'm not sure. All I know is,
someone in jail had a list and Reuben somehow got
hold of it."
"And you knew about it because ..."
Matter-of-factly: "He made me type the blackmail
letters."
The notion was chilling; just the thought, for instance,
of Paddy or Terence getting such a letter made
me feel sick. And two decades earlier, even right now
in a lot of places, it would have been devastating.
"I had an old typewriter in my room," Mike explained.
"And he told me what to write. I didn't even
really understand what those letters were saying. Later,
though, of course I figured it out."
However improbable--I still didn't see quite how
it could have happened--it sounded absolutely like the
kind of scheme Reuben would have tried: cruel. Terrifying
in the extreme.
In short, right up Reuben Tate's alley. "My ex
husband says that Reuben knew some things about
him," I said. "Things that happened in the past, in
New York. Can you think of how Reuben might have
found out about them?"
It just seemed so unlikely. But Mike answered
quickly and surely. "Oh, he'd have no problem with
that. He told me about it, in fact, bragging. Went to
your ex-husband's house when he wasn't there,
snooped through the mail in the mailbox, found out
where he'd come from. Then he went to the library, got
on the computer, and looked on the Internet in back
issues of newspapers. Searched them for your ex
husband's name. Just a fishing expedition, but after he
hit paydirt it was easy."
So Reuben had been bragging his plan around, not
only to Paddy Farrell. As Ellie had said, underestimating
Reuben would be a mistake. "This last time he
came back, did he come here to the cottage? Did he ask
for anything? Maybe threaten you, too?"
"Actually, he did," Mike replied. "Heard where I
lived, climbed the hill. Can't keep a bad man down, I
guess. And he was a real bastard."
"What did he want?" Ellie asked casually.
Too casually, and her glance at me as she came to
the table was pointed. I got up and went to the window
where she had been.
"Oh, the usual," Mike replied. "Had a bottle with
him; he'd heard I was divorced. Maybe he thought
we'd get to be drinking buddies." He snorted. "As if."
Drawing back a gingham curtain, I scanned the
yard with its compost heap and neatly kept animal
pens, then stopped when I saw the big chopping block
made of a squat, upended log.
It was covered with blood.
Those chickens, I thought, my heart hammering
foolishly. He butchered a chicken,
that's all. I had an abrupt, unwelcome vision
of one of the creatures running around headless;
a vision, I gathered, that had been reality not long
ago. Feathers littered the area around the chopping
block. I let the curtain drop.
"So when you knew him back then, you were
eleven or twelve, and Reuben was ... nineteen or
twenty?"
Mike nodded. "Something like that. My parents
didn't know about it, of course. And the attraction
was, he liked to be the power in any situation."
Reuben Tate was just rising like hell in my estimation.
Blackmail, murder, pedophilia or one of its
cousins--what would be next among his habits: cannibalism?
"And he liked that I would do what he said," Mike