A bucket of ashes (18 page)

From the corner of her eye, she saw Will cast a jaundiced look at the ceiling. He was cradling his right arm with his left, she noticed.

“That’s swell of you,” Quinn said, sneering at Thursby as he fumbled in his coat for a hand-rolled cigarette and a match. “Real swell.”

“They told me you were a fugitive for weeks,” Nell continued. “I must say, it was pretty savvy of you, laying low like that , knowing you’d be connected with my brother—but how absolutely
horrid,
having to hide from the police when one has done nothing wrong.”

“I was hounded day and night,” Quinn said through a flutter of smoke, “but not by the cops. They tacked up my picture, but nobody pays them things any mind, not in my neck of the woods, anyway. It was the husband, Cunningham. He tried to run me to ground in my own neighborhood, got all my friends lookin’ to put a bullet in me—or them I thought was my friends. Come to find there wasn’t no safe place for me to hole up, and nobody I could trust. I had to keep on the move, keep my head down every second of the day, sleep with one eye open.”

“Yes, I saw the handbill Mr. Cunningham distributed,” Nell said, choosing her words with care because of the intensity with which Quinn’s earnest young lawyer was following the conversation. “It was vigilante justice, nothing more. But of course it isn’t justice at all when an innocent man ends up arrested for a crime he didn’t commit.”

“It wasn’t just them handbills,” Quinn said. “He was on my scent—Jim’s, too—long before he started handin’ them out. He was like a bloodhound, askin’ folks if they seen us, tellin’ ‘em they could make an easy five grand if they popped us...”

“David.” Thursby closed a hand over Quinn’s shoulder. “You’d best—”

“When did he start nosing around like this?” Nell asked Quinn.

“Oh, he’d been gunnin’ for us since we done the job.” Quinn stilled in the act of raising the cigarette to his mouth.

Thursby closed his eyes.

Will smiled at Nell in a way that said,
Touché, Cornelia.

Quinn stabbed out the cigarette. “Shit.”

Bryce pushed off the wall with a whoop of triumph. “That sounded like a confession to me.”

“It was nothing of the sort,” Thursby said. “It was an innocent statement, open to interpretation.”

“Yeah, well, I got a pretty good idea how a jury’s gonna interpret it,” Bryce said.

“Did you shoot Susannah Cunningham?” Will asked Quinn.

Thursby said, “David, don’t—”

“No, uh-uh,” said Quin, shaking his head. “Nope. I sure didn’t. That was Jim.”

“Really?” Nell said.

“I didn’t even bring a gun. I don’t even own one.” Quinn drew on the cigarette, his gaze darting this way and that—everywhere but at Nell. “It was Jim that had the jumpy trigger finger, not me.”

“Well, that’s very sobering,” Nell said. “And surprising. Jamie was always an abysmal shot, never could get the hang of it. Of course, I hadn’t seen him in over a decade. It’s possible he practiced and got better. Still...” She turned to Chief Bryce. “Didn’t you say Mrs. Cunningham was shot directly in the middle of the forehead?”

“Yep. You’d of thought it was point blank range, but it had to be a good thirty, forty feet, given the size of that library—and dark, to boot.”

“That sounds like the work of an expert marksman,” Nell said, “someone with unerring skill and cool nerves, a real deadeye. That kind of accuracy with a gun...” She lowered her voice to a throatier timbre and pressed a hand to her throat, as if on the verge of swooning. “I’ve watched sharpshooters practicing with targets. It’s breathtaking to see a man exhibit such mastery over his weapon. My heart races just watching him load and cock it, but when he squeezes the trigger and that bullet penetrates the bull’s-eye...” She hitched in a breath. “I shiver just thinking about it.”

Every man in the room was staring in dazed silence at Nell. Will’s mouth curved into a smile. Young Thursby’s ears were a deep, scalding red.

Quinn whispered something into his lawyer’s ear, but sound traveled in that little room. “...get away without hangin’ if I didn’t—”

“It doesn’t matter who actually shot her,” Thursby whispered back. “It’s felony murder either way—but you don’t want to be admitting to any more than you—”

“I did it,” Quinn told Nell, his bulbous eyes glittering with pride. “I shot her. Jim didn’t even have a gun, he didn’t like ‘em. It was me.”

“For pity’s sake, David,” Thursby groaned.

“We didn’t think no one was home till she come traipsin’ downstairs, callin’ out”—he adopted a falsetto—“‘Freddie? Is that you?’ I drop that cabinet full of boat crap we’re draggin’, whip out my Remington, and
bam
!” Quinn formed the shape of a gun by clasping his hands and extending a forefinger, which he pressed to the center of his forehead. “Neat as a drill, right through the braincase.” He aimed the finger at his mouth and mimed blowing into the barrel.

Thursby was sitting back in his chair, looking defeated.

Quinn lit another cigarette. “Jim, he was on the high ropes after that, screamin’ and hollerin’, sayin’ why’d I have to shoot her—me sayin’ she shouldn’t of snuck up on us like that. He threw a punch at me, but I dodged it and he lost his footing and landed on his ass. Didn’t get up, just hung his head and started boo-hooin’ like a schoolgirl.”

“He cried?” Nell said.

“A grown man, for Chrissakes. I didn’t know whether to laugh or puke. See, he knew the lady from working on her gardens, ‘cause he’d be tillin’ and she’d be plantin’, and they’d get to talkin’. He said she used to bring him lemonade with ice in it and slices of lemon in it, and sometimes cherries, and it was the best lemonade he ever drunk. He said he used to say funny things ‘cause he liked the way she laughed, with her whole face kinda crunchin’ up, which I never could picture. You ask me, he was sweet on her, never mind her bein’ older and a rich married lady. Anyways, me and him parted ways after that. He said he had his fill of me, didn’t ever want to lay eyes on me again, called me some names he didn’t ought to call me. I said good riddance.”

Will said, “Was that the last time you saw him?”

Quinn blew a plume of smoke in Will’s direction. “I told you—we parted ways. That means I never seen him again.”

“Are you sure?” Nell asked. “You didn’t start worrying that he’d get caught and pin the killing on you? At the time, you thought only the actual shooter would get charged with murder. You wanted to make sure he couldn’t testify against you, so you snooped around and discovered he was hiding in the Gilmartins’ cranberry shed. You sneaked in there with a knife one night while he was sleeping and—”

“Knives are for bitches,” Quinn said.

His hands curling into fists, Will said, “Don’t give me an excuse, Quinn.”

“That’s not an answer,” Nell said. “Did you stab him or not?”

“No, I did not.” He was looking right at her.

“Did Mr. Cunningham arrange for you and Jamie to steal that nautical collection?” she asked.

His eyebrows quirked. “How’d you know that?”

That question seemed to be echoed in the expressions of every man there, including Will.

She said, “When I first spoke to Chief Bryce about this case, he told me that Mr. Cunningham’s handbills offering a reward for your death were printed up the day after Jamie’s body was identified, which would have been August first. Prior to that, no one even suspected Jamie—nor you, Mr. Quinn. But a few minutes ago, you told me that Mr. Cunningham had been ‘gunning for you since you did the job,’ which was July nineteenth. So, for two weeks, Frederick Cunningham had known exactly who broke into his home that night.”

“Hunh,” said Chief Bryce, who, had he the slightest aptitude for police work, would have sorted this out with no help from Nell.

“There are only two ways Mr. Cunningham could have known this,” Nell said. “On possibility is that he figured it out through his amateur sleuthing. Then, rather than tell the police, he decided to exact personal revenge against his wife’s murderers by having them killed. The other possibility is that he contracted with you and Jamie to steal that collection while he and his wife were both away. You’ve just confirmed for me that it was the latter.”

“Why the hell—’scuse me,” Bryce said. “Why the heck would he want his own property stolen? ‘Specially something so valuable?”

“For the insurance money?” Will suggested.

Quinn nodded as he took a puff. “That, and Jamie was supposed to fork over half of whatever he made fencin’ the stuff. It was Jamie he cooked up the deal with. He figured Jamie was a drifter who’d jump at the chance to make a haul like that, and he was right. Jamie said he felt bad, though, ‘cause Susannah—that’s what he called her, not to her face, but to me—he said she’d talked about that collection, said it meant a lot to her. She told him her husband was always on her to let him sell it, ‘cause they had money troubles, but she told him he should sell his sailboat instead—only he wasn’t about to do that. So that’s why he had to go around her back and set it up to look like a burglary. Jamie hated to go along with it, but he wanted that money. He said he could maybe buy himself a fishing boat and earn an honest living. He was always talkin’ about that—gettin’ outa the life.”

Will met Nell’s gaze. She just shook her head.

“Cunningham told Jamie where to find the spare key,” continued Quinn, who, unrestrained by his now apathetic lawyer, was industriously “yakking a blue streak.” “He said to bring a wagon and a partner, and to do it on the nineteenth, when he’d be in New York and the missus on Martha’s Vineyard.”

“Only he wasn’t counting on the ferry being canceled because of that storm over the Sound,” Bryce said.

“That’s ‘cause he’s an amateur,” Quinn offered helpfully. “He wasn’t thinkin’ about what-all could go wrong. He was just thinkin’ about the money.”

 Bryce said, “For what it’s worth, he seemed pretty broken up when he got off that train.”

“Guilt will have that effect,” Will said. “His wife never would have died if he hadn’t conspired to have that collection stolen.”

“He was grief-stricken,” Nell said, “but he was scared, too. He knew that if Jamie and Quinn were caught, they’d most likely spill the beans about his little scheme, and then
he’d
end up behind bars, too.”

“So he tried to silence them before they could be arrested,” Bryce said.

“He may have even succeeded, at least as regards my brother,” Nell said. “If Jamie really did die from a knife wound, I’ll wager the killer is five thousand dollars richer.”

“So looks like Cunningham’s guilty of... let’s see.” Counting off on his fingers, Bryce said, “Conspiracy to commit murder, attempted insurance fraud, obstruction of justice... And who knows what the D.A. will charge him with for trying to steal and fence his own property.”

“It’s the conspiracy to commit murder that I’m interested in,” Nell said. “I want to know how and why my brother died.”

“Quinn’s arrest is Cunningham’s worst nightmare,” Will said. “Does he know about it?”

“Sure,” Bryce said. “I sent one of the boys over to his place yesterday evening to tell him. Now I’m gonna have to head over there myself and arrest the sorry gump.”

“Assuming he hasn’t flown the coop one step ahead of you,” Will said.

“If he hasn’t,” Quinn said as he lit another cigarette, “he’s not just an amateur, he’s a horse’s ass.”

*   *   *

Chief Bryce, flanked by two of his men, pounded on the front door of Frederick Cunningham’s Falmouth Heights “cottage”—a palatial white mansion right on the Sound—while Nell and Will waited on the badly overgrown front lawn.

Bryce had objected when Nell asked to come along so as to question Cunningham about Jamie’s death, saying it was highly irregular to bring a civilian along when making an arrest, especially a female civilian. He’d relented when Will had asked him if he thought the
Barnstable Patriot
might be interested in running a story on the governess who’d gotten to the root of the Cunningham case by out-detecting Falmouth’s Chief Constable.

Bryce tried the door; no luck. They circled the house, but the back door was locked, as well. It was a glass door, so Nell could see into the vast, sumptuously appointed library and through its column-flanked doorway to a hall lined with marble statues. There was an odd stillness to the house, right down to the dust hovering in shafts of sunlight from the windows on the west wall. On the east wall, next to a fireplace with an ornately carved overmantel, was an empty space with four tamped-down marks on the Aubusson carpet where heavy cabinet legs had stood.

They checked the carriage house, whose three bays held an elegant landau, a park phaeton, and a utilitarian wagon. The upstairs servants’ quarters were unoccupied—beds stripped, dressers empty.

“I say, may we help you?” a man called out as they were heading toward the nearby stable. They turned to find an aristocratically handsome middle-aged couple in bathing attire and sunglasses walking toward them from the adjacent backyard.

Bryce introduced himself to the neighbors, who identified themselves as Alice and Walter Wyndham, and asked them if they knew of Frederick Cunningham’s whereabouts.

“I haven’t seen him since last night,” Mr. Wyndham said. “He came over to give me his boat.”