excuse me, I have a long way to go, and since I'll have
to do all the driving myself, I want to get a head start."
It was two in the afternoon, too late to get a head
start on anything. He was getting out, was what he was
doing. But I let him leave. I couldn't stop him.
Besides, he'd already given me what I wanted.
At the door, he turned to me. "Look, I hated Reuben.
But I didn't kill him. And I certainly didn't kill my
father, your foolish suspicions notwithstanding."
He sounded so sincere. Everyone did. "Marcus," I
asked quietly, "what's on your hand?"
I'd promised Bob Arnold, but I couldn't help it,
and since Marcus was leaving, he wouldn't be telling
anyone I'd asked.
I hoped. "The spot," I added, "that you always
keep covered up with the makeup?"
At this he whitened suddenly, his face tightening as
if painfully wounded. Then he turned and stalked out.
"Part of what he told us is true," I said to Ellie
when we got to the street. "They weren't following
Reuben. Heywood never even said so, not in plain
words."
In my mind, I went over the talk I'd had with the
older man at the lake. "Heywood Sondergard just
went along with whatever I said, let me draw conclusions."
The Winnebago's engine roared to life. "And
now," I went on, watching the big vehicle lumber up
Washington Street toward the causeway, "Marcus is
getting out of here like his hat is on fire and his pants
are catching. What's he in such a big hurry about?"
"But they still did," Ellie recalled, meaning Reuben
and the Sondergards, "end up in the same towns at the
same time. It could hardly have been coincidence.
So ..."
"Right," I said. "Tate was following them. Their
concerts were booked well in advance, so it wouldn't
be difficult. And the reason he would go on doing that
would be ..."
"Money. One of them--Heywood or Marcus--
was paying him."
"Absolutely. My question is, for what?"
"Let's," Ellie said thoughtfully, "go see Mike Car-
pentier one more time."
The house on the hill was as storybook
pretty and remote as ever, the bay shining
gloriously below it and the sky blue above.
Mike was turning the compost heap behind
his vegetable garden, his hands encased in leather gardening
gloves.
"He was on it," he confirmed. "The list Reuben
had; Reverend Sondergard was one of the men I wrote
letters to, when Reuben got out of jail."
"And did he? Pay, that is?" Once again I was
struck by the assertive neatness of the garden area, and
in fact the whole service portion--firewood, food production,
and trash burning, composting, or recycling--
of the acre of paradise:
Paper went in a barrel, to be reduced to a smaller
volume of ashes. The ashes apparently went in the
compost heap, as did all vegetable waste. Bins held bottles
and cans; a wooden box with a slat top received all
meat scraps.
Only this last part of the arrangement seemed to
need some tuning; animals had been at the scrap bin,
and a couple of gnawed chicken bones lay scattered
near it.
He saw me looking at it. "Damned vermin. Sometimes
they're smarter than people."
"You could get a cat." The tactless words were out
of my mouth before I thought about them. He made a
face of distaste.
"Don't care for them. Speaking of vermin, though,
yeah, I think Reuben got some money from Heywood.
Don't know for sure. I was on the giving end, the giving-trouble
part. But not on the receiving end, where
the money was. That part was all Reuben's."
He stuck his pitchfork into the compost as Molly's
face appeared at an upstairs cottage window, then vanished
again.
"Is she all right?" I asked. "After what happened
at the supper? It must have been awful for her, seeing
all of that. And her doll ..."
"I made her another one," Mike said shortly.
"She's fine."
"Willow says," Ellie told Mike, "that you were at
the fire. The night Deckie died."
"Willow," Mike replied, "is a lying fool. All she
wants is to cover her own dirt, by making a big show
of somebody else's."
Willow was also halfway to Boston by now, according
to the proprietors of the Motel East. The police
had been there first thing, done their interview, gotten
her address and phone number. We wouldn't be seeing
her again, or her intriguing husband, either.
"You mean you weren't there?" I said, glancing at
the scrap box again. Something had gnawed through
the side of it; something small, sharp toothed, and hungry.
"Willow lied about that?"
"I said I wasn't," he replied flatly. "And I don't see
how you knew Heywood Sondergard was on that list,
either. Reuben never told anyone, and he told me not
to. And I didn't."
He glanced up sharply. "Molly! I said stay inside."
A glimmer of blond hair vanished around the corner
of the house, and the door slammed.
"After all," he went on, plunging the pitchfork
into the compost again, "there's no sense blackmailing
somebody whose dark secret is common knowledge, is
there? So I shut up."
He dug energetically, but stopped suddenly, his
shoulders sagging. "It was all a long time ago," he said
in less combative tones. "Reuben was in the past."
I looked out over the water. "Sometimes the past
lives on. When people do more than hurt us. When the
hurt does damage."
I was thinking of Victor: how sometimes you just
can't get there from here. It changes you, finding that
out. But if you're like Mike you go on, build around it
somehow. Or like Sam.
"He wouldn't let me be," Mike said suddenly. "I
was afraid to tell anybody. He was always around.
Even in my own room ..."
"It must have been scary," I said. If adults in East
port were frightened of Reuben Tate, what must it have
been like for a child? "I'm surprised it really didn't scar
you for life. If," I added gently, "you're sure it didn't?"
Because building around it really isn't the best solution.
If you have to, then you do it, allowing for the
radiator that can't be removed, the supporting wall
that must remain where it is or the rest of the house
will fall down.
But it can leave you in a wicked fix. He straightened.
"You know, it might have scarred me. For a
while I thought it had, he scared me so damn badly.
But then we had Molly, and somehow after that I was
okay again. You know how a kid can straighten out
your priorities whether you like it or not?"
"I do," I said, thinking of life after Sam. "All of a
sudden you're a sensible grown-up person, because you
have to be. You do things you never dreamed of being
able to do."
He smiled at me. "When I first saw her, and I realized
this helpless little creature was depending on
me ..."
"Right," I laughed, remembering. "You thought
oh my God, the poor thing, it'll starve, or I'll drop it,
or something."
"Yeah," he agreed with a grin. "How old is
yours?" he asked, leaning on the pitchfork.
"Seventeen. I didn't," I added, "drop him. And he
eats as if he's starving, nowadays, but I didn't starve
him back then. You and your ex worked it out okay, I
guess, about raising Molly. I met Anne, by the way."
Mike nodded. "Better this way for all of us. Anne's
a good person. She cares a hell of a lot. She's just not
cut out for what people think of as the normal wife and
mother thing. That's all."
Which was what I had gathered from her, too. I
gazed around the little homestead; Ellie had made herself
scarce. There were hollyhocks in the dooryard, and
the trellis up the side of the cottage was still full of
roses, their perfume wafting lightly on a warm offshore
breeze.
"You've done a great job here," I said, meaning it.
"The gardens, your ways of taking care of everything,
and the trellis. I do love a trellis."
His look sharpened for an instant, then relaxed.
"Thank you. All the work is difficult sometimes, but
it's worth it. That was one thing the Reverend Sondergard
said that was worth something: 'Mikey,' he told
me, 'if you want things to be a certain way, you have to
make them that way.' "
Wade had said that, too, I remembered. That must
have been where he'd gotten the phrase: from Hey
wood Sondergard. Out on the water a barge puttered
steadily toward the salmon pens.
"It was bad for a while," Mike said. "And the divorce
itself was hard." He gazed around the small
homestead. "But we're all right now, and we're going
to be even better."
Hearing him say it made me wish I had some wood
to knock for him. "Was there ever really a list?" I
asked quietly, gazing out at the bright water. "Of gay
men Reuben was blackmailing? Or did he just make
that up, about getting hold of one in jail?"
He shook his head regretfully. "I don't know. I've
wondered about it myself. He had names, addresses.
But--"
"But how would he have gotten them?" I finished
for him.
Mike nodded. "I believed him back then, but now I
guess it's more likely he just picked those guys out of a
bunch of phone books. Yellow Pages listings of doctors,
dentists--men he thought would have some
money, or had a lot at stake. Maybe some would pay,
Reuben would be thinking. And maybe some did."
"What if one had called the cops on him, instead?"
He shrugged. "If they had, he'd just make himself
scarce for a while. And none did that."
A deep breath. Then: "You were right about the
night at Deckie's. I was there, Reuben made me go
along with him. Later I said it was Willow; that was
more likely, and it took the heat off me. I was scared
my folks would find out I hung out with Reuben, and
then he might hurt them. But I don't really know what
Sondergard paid him for, or if he paid. Reuben added
something to the letter that I didn't see," he confessed.