A Month at the Shore (41 page)

"I'm happy enough," he said quickly. But there was a hint of defensiveness in his tone.

Laura was afraid that she might have offended him, so she said warmly, "Well, sure, why wouldn't you be happy? Town councilman
... mayor next. Who knows what's after that? You're living a dream life," she said, slipping into a pair of sandals.

And she would be, too, once they finished muddling through the current mess. It was amazing, how everything seemed more doable now that she had Ken by her side.

She took the stairs too quickly, stumbling and grabbing the banister in time to save herself from tumbling head-first down the stairwell.

"I'm going to kill myself," she said, annoyed with her choice of shoes.

Gabe was waiting at the landing. "Don't worry; I would have caught you," he said gallantly.

"Oh, for—I don't have a car!" Laura said, amazed that she'd overlooked the detail. "I wonder how Corinne thought I was supposed to follow her—on the tractor?"

"No problem; I'll give you a lift. I want to see Corinne anyway. Have you retained an attorney?"

"Yours—if he ever returns my call. Oh, but how can he
?
I won't be here
!"

"Why
don't
I
try?" He reached in his pocket and pulled out
his
own cell
, then hit an autodial button.

They had made it to the porch. Laura waited impatiently while the attorney's secretary put him on hold. She was antsy, ready to go. If she had a bike, she would have hopped on it. Gabe smiled reassuringly, and she smiled back, and that's when she saw it.

A Timex watch on his wrist. An exact copy of the one she'd found in the greenhouse on the first day of her return.

"I've seen that watch," she said, surprised.

Gabe shrugged and said, "Probably. I've used these for
decades
. It's self-winding: no fuss, no muss. Whenever my
Rolex is out having its annual tune-up, I slap one of these Timexes on my wrist. Not fancy, but they do the—"

"Job. Yes," Laura said, smiling faintly. "Excuse me. I just remembered something."

She turned back into the house just as Gabe got connected to Attorney Mandaren. "Jim, yeah, this is Gabe. How're you doin'? Listen, I've got a—
n
o, I don't think they'll appeal. Why would they?"

He was instantly deep in conversation on some other matter than Snack. Laura hurried up the stairs and went directly to the top drawer of her dresser.

It was the same watch, all right. The pattern on the flexible band might have been slightly different, but other than that
...

Was it Gabe's? And if it was, did it matter? She hadn't thought about the rusted timepiece since the night she'd ignored Snack's command to throw it out and instead had dumped it in a drawer. Now, suddenly, it seemed to have moved to stage center in her thoughts. She switched on the bureau's lamp and studied the Timex more closely. A watch. An ordinary watch missing a pin from its band. She held it up to the light. For the first time, she noticed a strand of long hair caught in the links of the band.

Long, straight, jet-black hair.

"Ah, you found it," came his voice from behind her.

She whirled around so fast that the room spun.

****

Billy sat fidgeting in the same leather armchair that Laura had chosen when she and Corinne came to Chepaquit Savings to see about a loan. Ken had been thrilled to be able to free the two sisters from the clutches of a predatory lender—but he wasn't nearly so sure what he could do for Billy.

"You want to know about
... getting a shot?" he asked, baffled by Billy's rambling request.

"Like in the movies," Billy said, trying his best to explain. "I seen it where the guy got a shot, and right away he started telling all this stuff that he wouldn't even tell them when they were beating him up. It was because of the shot. The shot made him tell."

"You mean, truth serum? But why would you want to get a shot of truth serum? You've already
told
the truth."

"Well, I don't
want
to get a shot," Billy admitted. "I'm kind of afraid of shots. But if that's the only way
... unless
... could they give it to someone in cough syrup, do you know? Because that wouldn't be so bad. I could take it in cough syrup," he decided, nodding his big, teddy-bear head. "Especially if it was cherry."

Aware that with the exception of Laura, Billy was the only witness who had come forward with information about that infamous night, Ken decided to probe a little further into his memory.

He came around to the front of his desk and leaned ever so casually back on it. "Billy? You're not keeping anything from me, are you? You've told me everything that you can remember?"

"I don't
know
!"
Billy
said in a pathetic wail. "That's why I want to have the—what do you call it?"

"Truth serum?"

"Yeah, that. Because maybe I know something else that I just forgot, and if I can just remember it, Snack will be okay. I got Snack
into
trouble," he said, pounding a massive fist into the palm of his hand for emphasis. "I have to try to get Snack
out
of trouble."

With a pleading look at Ken, he said, "Why did he have to fight with Sylvia, anyway? Why couldn't he be like Gabe?"

The muscles in Ken's thighs tightened with the effort not to jump up and grab Billy by the shirt. "Like
... Gabe?" he said, aware that his heart had just made a crashing attempt to break through his chest. "How do you mean?"

"Well, Gabe was much nicer to Sylvia. He talked real soft to her. He laughed. He hugged her. He even kissed her. That's how much
he
liked her."

God Almighty.
"Yeah, a lot of people liked Sylvia. I guess Gabe was one of them. So
... Sylvia was in a better mood with Gabe than she was with Snack?" he asked carefully.

Billy snorted, as if he were blowing milk through his nose, and said, "There's no comparison."

"Yeah. And Gabe came over on the same day, did you say?" He hadn't said, but never mind.

"In the morning. My mom says I'm a morning person," Billy volunteered. "Maybe Sylvia is, too. Used to be, I mean. And Gabe, he's always going off somewhere early. So he must be a morning person, too. But Snack! He overslept all the time. His dad was always getting on him about that."

"Mm. I'll bet." From what Ken had learned about Sylvia, he wasn't surprised that she had Gabe under her thumb as well. Maybe the attraction for her was Gabe's naughty little secret. Obviously the councilman wouldn't be in a hurry to volunteer information that might make him look just as callow as Snack.

If
Billy was telling the truth and not simply fantasizing. After all, the golden boy of Chepaquit with the prettiest girl in Chepaquit: Billy's romantic heart might want to pair up Gabe and Sylvia, regardless.

But if Billy
were
telling the truth
...
.

"Billy, do you remember that foggy night you told me about, the one where you fell asleep in the delivery van listening to a song you liked? When you woke up, you saw someone dragging something heavy into the compost pile, right?"

Billy nodded, but he was clearly nervous about being questioned.

Ken said, "I want you to think very hard. Even without truth serum, I'll bet you can remember: was there any other vehicle in the parking lot when you woke up after your nap in the van?"

"I don't even have to think, because there wasn't!" Billy said triumphantly. He'd aced the test, and he was very pleased. "That's why I thought it could be Snack—because he lived right there!" he explained with Watson-like enthusiasm.

Unfortunately, it wasn't quite so elementary as that.

Why did the chicken cross the road?

To get to the other side.

The riddle came and went like a flash of lightning, leaving Ken both dazed and jolted in its wake.

Gabe walks across the road, tries to pick up where he left off earlier that day, gets rebuffed or, if she's a tease, even worse. A kid with hormones amuck—Ken could testify about hormones amuck at that age—he loses it, kills her, panics, hides her.

Could the chicken cross the road and then go back without being caught?

On a foggy night? All too easily.

"Thanks, Billy. You've been a big help. You've been more than a big help."

"Really?" No one was more surprised than Billy. "You mean I won't have to get a shot?"

"Not at all." Ken slapped Billy on the back and shook his hand and got him moving up and out of the leather chair. He saw him to the door, then went back to his desk and, still standing, called Laura. He had plenty to say and he wanted to see her, his afternoon's schedule be damned. When there was no answer, he became uneasy. Unnecessarily so, because she and her brother and sister could have been working anywhere on the grounds, but
... he was uneasy.

In the small anteroom to his office, his assistant sat in front of a computer monitor. "I'll be gone for an hour," he told her. "Call me on the cell phone if it can't wait. If Laura Shore calls—"

"She did call," Nancy said, surprising him. "She asked me not to leave a message, it wasn't important, but—she did call."

"Oh. Okay. Well
... hmm. In that case..." He shrugged and went back into his office.

And in less than a minute, came back out again.

"I'll be at Shore Gardens," he told Nancy on his way out the door.

He was in the bank's parking lot when Andy Mellon hailed him over to the police station's parking lot.

"I've got a bone to pick with you, pal," the chief yelled over.

Ken had a strong hunch that the chief wasn't flagging him down to invite him to go fishing aboard his beloved boat.

His knife was at her throat.

Laura felt the bite of its flat blade against her skin; in a state of shock, she thought,
He doesn't want to kill me, only to frighten me. Please, God. Only frighten me.

Nausea swept over her; she was going to be sick.

"Write exactly what I tell you to," Gabe commanded. His voice was taut.

She had to slide the paper farther away from her on the kitchen table just to see what she was writing. She held her head perfectly straight, perfectly stiff. The pen he'd found next to the phone was poised in her hand.

"Say: 'Snack didn't kill Sylvia. I did'
.
"

Laura did as she was told, but her hand was shaking so much, and the angle was so acute, that the crabbed handwriting barely resembled her own.

Gabe was watching her progress. "Okay," he said, "now write, 'Sylvia was coming on to my father. We fought, and she hit her head on the greenhouse sink
'."

"D-did she?" Laura asked without moving her head a millimeter.

"No. I strangled her. Write."

She shaped the words in what seemed like slow motion.

He said, "Now say, 'I panicked and b
uried her in the compost pile'.
"

"Did y—?"

"Yes.
Write
."

Laura was giddy with fear, adrift in an adrenaline rush so strong that every pore of her skin felt needled with pain. She did as Gabe said, clinging desperately to the time she was buying.

Still staring straight ahead, she pleaded, "Me? Gabe—
me
?"

"Why not? Half the town hates you, anyway. And the other half will understand your dilemma: you want to save your brother, but you know you'll lose your lover. You decide to do something right just
once
in your sorry life—so you throw yourself on your sword."

The simple poetry of his plan was enough to make her angry. Without moving a muscle, she said, "They'll never believe
... this bullshit."

"You wish," Gabe sneered.

"You're the one
... who hates us," she said, staring immobilized at Corinne's cheerful new valence.

"Not anymore," he said. "Back then—oh, yes. I didn't think much of having to take a number for Sylvia after your brother—and your old man."

"Not my father," she said, rejecting his twisted view.

"Wrong. After I killed her—which I hadn't intended to do, incidentally—I told your old man that she'd boinked Snack in the toolshed. I knew there'd be war after that. I figured either Snack or Ollie would end up taking the blame for Sylvia, but I never dreamed it would take this long to find her." He let out a bitter snort, and she felt the knife again. "Only the Shores."

He said, "Too bad I lost my watch. Or none of this would be necessary. I looked everywhere. Where did you find it?"