the equivalent of being a bank teller. Instead of listening
to my financial advice, he preferred to have his
stock accounts churned by a sweaty-palmed guy in a
cubicle somewhere out in East Omaha.
But Ellie and I had nosed rather thoroughly into
Eastport troubles, before--with, I might add, good results
--and although Victor had never indicated approval,
apparently he had noticed.
"Here goes." Bennet began reading, paraphrasing
as he went: "Death due to major hemorrhage, ligature
marks on the ankles, at least one sedative plus alcohol
in the blood. Details aren't in yet, so we don't know
what kind of drug it was."
So that was how someone had gotten Reuben up
on that gate: he'd been alive, all right. But maybe not
kicking. Which meant it would have been taken less
physical power than I'd envisioned.
"No blood on Victor," Bennet went on, "which
isn't so good. Seeing as he'd spent the previous evening
treating an injury from a bar brawl."
"Well, but that's reasonable. He would wash.
Victor washes if anybody looks at him cross-eyed, and
that wound he'd stitched up was pretty bloody."
"That's not how you'd play it if you were the prosecutor,
though. Could be the injured guy's blood
Victor washed off. Or ..."
Right. Or it could have been Reuben's. "What
about his clothes? Had he thrown them out, or washed
them?" Sam had said Victor ran the washing machine
and put out a bag of garbage, and the truck had come,
though it wasn't the regular day for pickup.
"Neither. Burned 'em in the burn barrel behind his
house. They think they're going to find blood evidence
on the remains of them, which he'd disposed of afterwards
in the trash."
Oh, criminy. "So the laundry was ..."
"Towels and whatnot from the shower he took.
Won't be able to type the blood, though, most likely.
Same with the blood in the traps," Bennet continued,
"under the sink and so on. Seems that according to
Victor, he regularly ran enough hot water and bleach
down there to sterilize the whole sewer system." Even
burning the clothes wasn't so far-fetched, for Victor;
once they were contaminated he'd have treated them
like any other medical waste.
"Sure," Bennet said resignedly when I explained
this to him. "I can see it. I couldn't say this to you
when we were on opposite sides, Jacobia. But Victor's
a strange little duck, in the hygiene department especially."
"Yeah, tell me about it. You only had him on your
agenda for thirteen months. I had him for a dozen
years."
"But," he went on, "try floating that Mr. Clean
stuff past a jury. They'll laugh in your face. Because
there's still the small problem of the weapon. How'd
somebody else get hold of it?"
Let's see, now: After explaining to the jury that
Victor was so fastidious that he actually carried antiseptic
hand wipes in his pocket in case he had to talk
on a strange telephone, we could go on to say that he
lived in a town where people didn't always lock their
doors when they went out, because for one thing they
didn't need to, and for another, they never knew when
someone else might need to get in. Thus, anyone could
have taken the scalpel.
Sure. And if pigs had wings, then smoky links
could fly. "So what's the plan?" I asked dejectedly.
"Tomorrow morning I'll be lining up my Maine
colleagues, see if we can try for bail. It won't work, of
course. And we'll try for a decent alibi. But I doubt
that'll happen, either. Sam say anything to you about
seeing Victor that night?"
My heart sank. "Uh-huh. Listen, Rennet, I don't
care what he saw. I don't want Sam testifying against
Victor."
A brief pause. "Well, we're not there, yet. Let's just
see how things develop, all right?"
I already knew how things would develop: like one
of the tumors Victor was so good at taking out. But
occasionally one of them was so fast and malignant, no
one could stop it.
"Bennet, did Victor say how he knew Reuben Tate
had been murdered?" It was the part that still bothered
me the most, that he'd known before he should have. I
could explain all the rest, but even I couldn't explain
that one.
Bennet's deep, unhappy sigh was the echo of my
own. "He says he got two phone calls early that morning,
the second from your town cop, Bob Arnold. Arnold
wanted to talk to Victor about the other guy who
died, with the tie in his throat. So they agreed to meet
at your place."
Which jibed with what Arnold had told me in the
cemetery. "And the first call?"
"Well. This is the difficult part. Victor says he got a
call from someone he didn't recognize. That the voice
was disguised; he couldn't even tell if it was a man or a
woman. A high whisper was the way he described it."
"Telling him Reuben Tate was dead."
"Right. Told him Tate wouldn't be bothering him
anymore, and enough more about what happened--
Victor says he doesn't remember the exact words--so
Victor knew how Tate had died. Then hung up."
"This was after Victor had done all his washing
and so on."
"Uh-huh," Bennet agreed unhappily. "And Victor
says he can't explain why the garbage guy came. Says
he didn't call him. What the garbage guy says, he
doesn't know who it was. His kid took a message, kid's
like five years old. So you see the problems."
My turn to sigh. "You bet."
"Jacobia," his tone was hesitant, "among your
complaints in the divorce was that Victor is a rather
skilled and habitual ..."
"Liar. Sure, there was that. But, Bennet, it was
about women. This is different. This is ..."
A set-up, I wanted to say, still trying to get used to
the notion myself. A deliberate plan to get Victor
blamed ... But I thought I'd better examine this idea
before talking about it.
Bennet, I noticed, wasn't mentioning it either. Your
honor, my client has been framed--
Right. And before that, he was abducted by aliens.
"Bennet, is there anything I can do right now to help?"
He cleared his throat delicately. "Well, Jacobia,
you can explain how I'm going to get paid. Sorry to
have to mention it, but Victor was vague on that
point."
Victor had put every cent he owned into his
trauma project: plans, a site workup, architects, regulatory
research. Getting a start-up medical thing going
was very expensive.
"Oh, I'll bet he was vague. Send me the bills,
Bennet, and I'll work it out with him when this is all over."
"Will do. And I'll keep you posted with any developments."
Hanging up, I found myself alone in the house.
Ellie had signed up to help make costumes for the children's
parade, part of the upcoming festival; she'd gone
off while I was on the phone with Rennet, and Sam and
Wade were out, too.
So I thought I might work on the windows; heaven
knew they still needed it. But the big old house felt
echoingly empty all around me, which was unusual for
it, and even from upstairs I could feel the presence of
that dratted Ouija board.
As a result I hit my thumb twice with the hammer,
then took a nick out of my palm with the cuts-all tool.
The weatherstripping would not lie flat, curling this
way and that like some bright copper snake, wriggly
with malicious willfulness.
So after half an hour of doing things wrong, then
making them worse by trying to fix them or do them
over, I called Bob Arnold and asked him to meet me at
Bay Books.
The bookstore on Water Street had been an
old-style pharmacy with a soda fountain, in
its previous incarnation. Bailey James had
kept the red leather stools and booths, the
beveled mirror behind the fountain's marble-topped
counter, the fizzy-water dispenser and the bottles of
syrups and flavorings. Then she'd brought in bestsellers,
the latest mystery novels, a magazine rack that
carried WIRED and The Drood Review, and a pay-by-the-half-hour
Internet connection.
The result combined the charm of old Eastport
with a modern hit of Y2K-and-beyond snazziness; in
one visit, you could satisfy your addictions to caffeine,
whodunnits, the World Wide Web, and of course that
most necessary Eastport commodity, local gossip.
Bob Arnold wasn't there yet. I slid onto a stool at
the counter as Bailey began making my regular drink, a
coffee frappe.
"So tell me," I said as she squirted whipped cream
on the concoction of coffee, ice cream, vanilla, and a
sprinkling of cinnamon, "about these musicians in
town for the festival, the Sondergards."
In one of the booths, Darcy Morrell from the
Women's Guild was explaining to Heather Banks how
to piece a log-cabin quilt; her canvas workbag was
open and bright fabric swatches were laid out on the
table between them.
"Heywood and Marcus," Darcy said, looking up
from her quilt pieces.
"Father's a minister. Son too, I think," Heather
added.
In the booth just behind them, Chuck Wilkes
broke off from insisting that Passamaquoddy Bay harbored
lobsters the size of Volkswagens but you never
saw them; they never came up from where they had
been spawning for a hundred years.
"Sing-along revivalists," he said. "Call themselves
Bible Belters, go around Maine in a big Winnebago,
singing for Christ."
"Snake-handling," Chuck's companion contributed,
peering over his coffee. He wore denim coveralls,
rubber boots, and a cap that said moose island marine.
"Speaking in tongues and so on. Falling down in religious
fits. That's their specialty."
"It is not. They're nice men," Bailey said
admonishingly. "I declare, that's the way foolish stories
get started."
She handed me my change from the old-fashioned
register. "They're up at the Heddlepenny House, staying
all week. Heywood has a piano-type contraption
and a guitar. And Marcus I believe plays the banjo."