Chapter 12

Mitch sat at the kitchen table while I put on fresh coffee. I sat across from him and lit a cigarette, and don’t ask me the number— I had stopped counting somewhere over Rhode Island.

“Now what is this? Sonny thinks Peter and the Wolf should get a lawyer? What on earth did you tell him to warrant that suggestion? ”

“I’m going to start at the beginning, Alex, and you can decide for yourself. Okay? ” He took a battered notebook from his shirt pocket and searched for the page he wanted. Was this murder so complicated? He’d written notes the length of War and Peace.

“Here we go. Early Sunday morning Lewis Schley was found at the amphitheater, beaten to death and laid out, if you will, on the stage. Because of the chilly night and heavy rain, time of death was difficult to establish, but both Doc Marsten and the medical examiner estimate between nine p.m. Saturday and two a.m. Sunday. Both believe it was probably early rather than late within that time frame. They both also think he was probably killed elsewhere and moved, though again the rain makes it uncertain.”

“He was alive and well at eight p.m., ” I reminded him.

“Yes. Several people at the Wharf Rat corroborate that. But nobody claims to have seen him—”

“Mitch, ” I interrupted. “I forgot to mention it, but I saw Jared Mather talking to him outside the Rat as I was leaving. Maybe Lewis said something to him that would help. Sorry I didn’t say something earlier. I’ve been rather... preoccupied.”

“Uh-huh, I know. The Wicked Witch of the Wat.”

“The what? ”

The Wat... you know, like wabbit.”

“Very funny. Who told you about that? ” My coffee was suddenly bitter.

“Oh, Joe, Lainey, Cassie. Anyway, I ran into Mather at Roy’s Café having lunch. He mentioned seeing Lewis, but no help there.” Mitch laughed. “He said he caught up with Lewis at the end of the alley. It looked like it was about to pour and he felt it his ‘Christian duty to offer the boy a ride.’ Lewis told him riding with queer haters made him nervous, he’d rather get wet. End of conversation. So much for dé tente.”

I smiled. “I bet Mather loved that.” Secretly I wondered if Mather and Lewis had had something going—or if Mather wished they did. Even so, Mather was a good investigator. If he knew anything he’d have made it known somehow. And I wasn’t going to out him just to take the focus off Wolf and Peter, even if Mitch would have believed me.

“Well, he was laughing when he told me. But later he said he felt kind of bad... like maybe if he’d insisted, Lewis would still be alive.”

Mitch yawned and I yearned for bed. But he started his speech again. “To continue, we still have not found his wallet. That, plus Mellon’s statement that he had over four hundred dollars, plus your statement that he had a full wallet at the Rat, lends credence to the robbery theory.” He started flipping through the notebook and making irritating little noises, clicking his tongue against the roof of his mouth.

“Mitch, you sound as if you’re on the stand at somebody’s trial. We aren’t there yet. Here, have some coffee. And speak English, not detecto-babble.”

He glared at me and looked embarrassed. “Yeah, sorry. We haven’t found the murder weapon yet, but forensics has been some help in telling us what to look for. It’s some kind of wooden stick. They found a few splinters in the wound, pine, common pine. And there was some sawdust on his jacket where the rain didn’t get to. It was not a baseball bat. The end of it was square, maybe three inches across. There were some funny—strange—bruises on his shoulders and neck, like he was hit with something knobby. Forensics finally decided it was probably a table leg or chair leg, probably square at the top, then round and tapered as it went down. One little knob toward the top and two or three toward the bottom.”

Mitch looked up at me meaningfully. “We know where there’s at least one table leg missing, don’t we? ”

“Yes, ” I agreed. “From a warped beat-up old table that could have lost that leg months ago. Surely you don’t think they took it off the table, zonked Lewis with it and then parked the table with three legs on the front porch for the edification of the Provincetown Police Department! ” I set my mug down emphatically.

He shrugged. “Whoever said murderers were always smart? Anyway, there’s more. Lewis had a recently healed wound on his left hand. The scar tissue was torn open, as if someone had ripped a watch off his wrist and opened up the cut doing it. We found out that so-called little Saturday morning confrontation Wolf told us about was really a first-class fistfight over a watch belonging to Peter Mellon. A woman who lives next door to them saw the whole thing. Now maybe Lewis didn’t give the watch back to Peter. Maybe Peter yanked it off his arm later. Maybe? We’ve got the watch, with a broken crystal, by the way, to test for any blood.” He moved on to another page, still clucking like a damned chicken.

“The crystal got broken Saturday morning, ” I sighed. “Before he knocked Peter down, Lewis teased him with the watch and then deliberately dropped it on the driveway. They told me about it Sunday before you and Pete Santos came by. And I noticed Lewis check a watch in the Rat. I don’t recall how it looked, but it wasn’t Peter’s.”

“Why didn’t you tell me? Whose side are you on? ” Now that query brought me up short. Did he already have them arrested and convicted? Did he know something that made him so certain?

“Truth. Justice. Motherhood and apple pie. Don’t be an ass, Mitch. I’m not on anybody’s side, and neither should you be! Can you visualize Peter Mellon in a fight? He took a dainty swipe at Lewis and missed. Lewis hit him on the cheek and then pushed him, and he fell down and cried over the broken watch. You better have your witness think again. You know old lady Winger would say anything to look important.”

“All right, Alex, I guess she could have exaggerated. But there’s one other thing. We know where Peter was from about seven-thirty till midnight Saturday... the Crown and Anchor. But we can’t seem to trace Wolf.” He began flipping and clicking again. I wondered idly if he would stop if I threw my coffee in his face.

Finally, he found the page he was looking for. “Wolf says he drove Peter to the Crown and dropped him off with his costume and makeup. He knew there would be no parking spaces, so he took the car home. He walked back down to the A-House for a drink and then went to see Peter sing. He says afterward he walked home again and brought the car down to get Peter and his stuff, since it had begun to rain. That is a complicated lot of walking and driving. More to the point, we haven’t found anyone who saw him, and he says he can’t remember who might recall seeing him at either place.”

I sipped my coffee and knew I could fall asleep with the mug in my hand. “The A-House was plain crazy. I’m surprised the fire department didn’t shut them down. It would have been easy to miss someone in that crowd. The Crown was not quite as bad, but I admit, I didn’t see Wolf. He could have been in the bar.”

“Maybe, ” Mitch conceded. “But the bartender doesn’t remember him being around until after eleven p.m., when he came in, soaking wet. And you’d think the barman would remember Wolf being there earlier, with Peter there playing the star.”

“He was damn good.” For some reason I was getting irritated. I tried to credit it to fatigue.

“I don’t doubt it, but see if this makes sense to you. Wolf drives Peter to the Crown. While he is gone, Lewis returns, maybe to get something he forgot from his room. And maybe, seeing the car gone he figures no one is home and goes in the main house to see what’s loose and easy to take—maybe from an unlocked guest room. Believe me, I don’t see Lewis as a choirboy! ”

I got up and poured us coffee. Mitch was reaching toward his notebook again, and I accidentally spilled a few drops of coffee on the back of his hand. He moved it quickly and licked the drops off and continued.

“Wolf returns. Lewis sees the car lights and tries to run away or maybe tries to attack Wolf. Or maybe Wolf sees him moving around in the house and thinks it’s an unknown burglar. Wolf grabs the table leg from somewhere in the car or the garage or by the garbage cans—whatever. He belts Lewis—maybe in selfdefense—and gets so mad he just loses it and finishes him off. He knows he can’t leave the body in his yard, so he takes him to Race Point and lays him out like King Tut on stage. He rips the watch off Lewis’s arm and keeps it. He tosses Lewis’s wallet out the car window along the way—with or without the money—comes back and collects Peter at the Crown and Anchor.”

I was weary. Mitch’s theory had some validity, but I felt constrained to defend the two old trouts. I don’t know why. The last person I had defended to the police had proved to be a double murderer. I hoped there wasn’t a pattern developing here. Maybe I just felt guilty about pouring tea and rum all over their living room furniture.

“You’re stretching, Mitch. Whether it was defense or attack, if Wolf saw Lewis before getting out of the car, he could have grabbed the tire iron. If Wolf was already in the house when he became aware of Lewis, he could have grabbed the poker. I cannot see him keeping a table leg in the car or in the garbage can or behind a shrub in the unlikely event he might someday need it as a weapon. And I cannot see him calmly unscrewing a table leg with Lewis about to jump him... or with Lewis running away. Next, you have Wolf at Race Point sometime before midnight, and then you have Harmon reporting their car out there around four-thirty a.m. I doubt Wolf took him there at eleven p.m. and went back five hours later to say farewell.”

I slumped in my chair, lit a cigarette and sipped my coffee. It was a tossup which tasted worse. I was not happy to hear Mitch prolong his diatribe.

“Oh, come on, Alex. I don’t know about you, but my tire iron is under a fiberboard floor in the trunk. It would take me ten minutes and plenty of noise to find it. The table leg was only held by two wing-nuts, fast and quiet to remove. And maybe Wolf was afraid the robber or Lewis could get to him before he got to the poker.”

I had a great desire to go get my own poker, but I still had some hope of getting Mitch past this sticking point. I had to; there were other possibilities.

“Mitch, it’s possible Lewis never came back to their house at all, ” I began.

“Of course it is. It’s also possible Wolf lured him there. We only have Peter’s claim that he paid Lewis his wages. Maybe they owed him money. Wolf told him to come to the house at ten. He was waiting, table leg in hand. Wolf could have dragged the body behind a shrub and gone back to the Crown to pick up Peter. They could have waited till the town quieted down and taken Lewis out there in the wee hours. Or maybe Wolf did take him out there before midnight, and the SUV Harmon saw later has nothing to do with anything. It works either way.” Mitch closed his damn notebook with a snap and a final tongue click.

“Mitch, this is all very iffy and circumstantial.” And unfortunately, his last scenario made a lot of sense.

“Agreed. But I want forensics to look at their SUV and that table. I hope to have a warrant for impounding them sometime tomorrow. It’s closing in on them, Alex. I think that’s what Sonny meant. I think he’s just being nice, advising they get legal counsel now, since they’re town residents and friends of yours.”

Why was everybody insisting that Peter and the Wolf were such close friends of mine? They never had been, not really. Oh, well. I was too tired to argue. “Okay, thanks for the rundown, Mitch. I’m ready to pass out. I’m sure you’re tired, too. I really hope it turns out to be someone else. Are you at least looking for other possibilities? ” I stretched my arms and yawned.

“Sure. We’ve been checking on transients, which isn’t easy on a weekend like this. We’ve got bartenders looking for anybody with a wad of cash. We’re looking for the murder weapon. We’re trying to figure where the sawdust came from. And we keep looking for someone who might have seen Lewis between eight and twelve. All we know right now is that he walked out of the Wharf Rat at eight p.m., headed for Reverend Bartles’ place and never got there. I don’t know much else to do.”

I didn’t either. I stood up, swayed, and we said a rather grumpy goodnight. Fargo and I quickly got ready for bed. Maybe sleep would help.

Sleep did. When Fargo woke very early Thursday morning with that “I’ve got to go—I’ve got to go now! ” look in his eye, I felt considerably better. And a dawn that promised to become a lovely, warm, sunny fall day didn’t hurt. Coffee and that first delightful cigarette improved my already good mood, and I didn’t even argue when Fargo started his little song-and-prance routine to go to the beach.

On the way there, I drove by the amphitheater, hoping for inspiration. All I saw was a lot of concrete, damp with morning dew, and some dressing areas and poles with bars for spotlights. There wasn’t even any police tape left. Obviously, they, too, felt the locale held nothing more of interest.

At the beach there was a single set of large footprints meandering along just below the high tide mark. I wondered if Harmon had been on early patrol for driftwood and other goodies. And I wondered what he had really seen through his haze of alcohol that rainy night.

Back home, I batted out my report for Mr. Ellis in overdrive, pleased that I would get it to him a day earlier than promised. Fargo and I delivered it. Ellis seemed surprised and happy to get it.

We chatted briefly about the three candidates. While Ellis was impressed by Nancy Baker’s expertise, he seemed to feel she might be “somewhat intense” for a small town. He didn’t even crack a smile at George Mills’s Halloween escapade. When I recounted Cynthia Hart’s adventure with the injured cat, however, I got the widest grin Choate Ellis is capable of giving. He said he couldn’t wait to learn the details. I got the feeling that Ms. Hart might soon be getting an offer. I was sure Mr. Mills would not. Well, Cynthia looked to be a deserving young woman.

As promised, we arrived at Peter and Wolf’s a shade before ten. Wolf let me in and returned to sit beside Peter on the couch. As I looked at them, all I could think of was two terrified white rabbits caught in the glare of oncoming headlights.

“What on earth is wrong? ” I asked. “You two look as if you’ve seen a ghost.” It was not a happy choice of words.

“Ooo-oooh! ” Peter moaned. “You’re right. The ghost of that horrid little creature will haunt us until we die! ” He burst into tears.

“Which won’t be long, ” Wolf added shakily, “if the police have their way. They just took away the Explorer. We’re finished. And we didn’t do it.”

“Oh, for God’s sake! ” I was in no mood to have aging queenly histrionics ruin my so-far great day. “Lewis ran errands in it sometimes, didn’t he? I think I’ve seen him in it. So of course they will find hair and clothing fibers of his in the SUV. All very logical. If that’s all they can come up with, actually, it rather lets some air out of their balloon. By the way, did you ever haul sawdust in the SUV? ”

“Sawdust? ” Wolf looked startled. “No, I can’t remember ever doing that. Some logs once or twice. But the cops saw a stain on one of the back mats. He pointed at it and told Mitch it looked like blood. That’s all they need. We’ll be arrested any minute.”

“Guys! Get a grip! Nobody’s yet proven blood is even there! And if so, it could be yours or anybody else’s who’s been in the vehicle... including a drippy steak! ”

“It’ll be Lewis’, ” Wolf projected gloomily. “He was bleeding all over the place the day I picked him up.”

“What the hell do you mean? ”

“Five—six weeks ago. I’d been to the dentist in Hyannis and was coming home in a drenching rain. Lewis was standing on the side of the road in just shirt and jeans, no jacket or raincoat, soaking wet, thumbing a ride. I stopped. He got in, shivering badly. I told him there was a blanket in back, and he sort of got up and leaned over, pulled it up front and draped it around him. I noticed his left hand was badly cut and bleeding and asked him what had happened.”

I couldn’t believe this! What else could they come up with to make themselves look guilty? Blood on the mat, blood on the blanket. My God.

Wolf went on. “He said he had slipped in the mud and fallen on a broken bottle. I believed him then. Now I think he was out in the boonies looking for places closed for the winter and easily robbed. I’ll bet he accidentally put his hand through a window, set off an alarm and ran. Anyway, he declined when I asked if he wanted to be dropped at the clinic. Said he had no money. I gave him a clean handkerchief to put around the cut.”

“So you brought him here? ’” I guessed.

“Yeah, I felt sorry for him. I patched his hand up—it really should have been stitched—and Peter fed him. Lewis asked if we knew of any jobs. Well, our sheet shaker was leaving shortly to go back to college, so we hired him. One of our more brilliant moves. But, Alex, you know how it is here with houseboys—they almost never have references.” He shrugged and raised his hands palm-up. “Hell, half the time the address and Social Security number they give you is bogus. How were we to know what a little louse he was? ” “I understand. It’s always that way with summer help unless they happen to be local people. Anyway, blood in the SUV is not going to mean much, there are too many ways it could have got there. Relax.” I could have used some coffee. The fact that they hadn’t even offered it told me how disturbed they were.

“No, ” Peter shook his head. “We want to hire you—retain you—whatever the term is. We need your help, Alex. Mitch is determined to frame us for this. He’s not doing anything to find the real killer! I mean, what about Reverend Bartles? It’s only Bartles’ word that Lewis never got to his place. Maybe Lewis did get there. I can think of all sorts of simply fabulous scenarios for that little rendezvous! ”

So could I. Just because Bartles had Rev in front of his name meant little to me. To me, Rev did not automatically translate to sinless. And Peter was right—Mitch had seemed to skip over Bartles. “Look, ” I temporized. “I’ve been away. Let me nose around for a day or so. If I turn anything up, we’ll talk about a bill.”

I nodded toward the coffee table, which still showed a slight discoloration. “I probably owe you more than you owe me. I still say there will probably be nothing, and in the long run the cops will handle it right. But now, I’d suggest you don’t answer any more police questions without a lawyer present.”

“Good! ” Peter drew himself up dramatically and took a deep breath. He continued haughtily, “If that child Mitch appears again, I shall simply send him home to mama! He threw an absolutely juvenile fit over that silly table.”

“Why did Mitch make a scene? ” I asked. “Didn’t you let him take it? Didn’t he have a proper warrant? ”

Wolf intervened as Peter drew another shuddering breath. “Oh, I guess the warrant was all right.”

“Then why not give him the table? ”

“Oh, you see, we burned it.”