Foursome (30 page)

“I just meant that Ramona told me you were sick in bed the night things went wild at Steve Shea’s house.”

“Oh, that. Just a headache. A real headache, I mean, from working outside without the hat on. Happens in any job. But inn-keeping? You get to meet people from every state, even a lot of countries. You learn more from them than you ever did from the teachers in school. You’re also your own boss, your own planner.
You
decide what color to paint the bedrooms,
you
decide what to put on the menus,
you
decide that maybe you don’t tell this guest or that every little thing about the place account of you just don’t have a good feeling about them.”

“That happen often?”

“Not really.”

“Ever happen with Steve Shea?”

Paine stopped rocking. “John, are you trying to … interrogate me?”

“Probably just from reflex, Ralph.”

The creaking resumed. “Hope so. You’re grasping at straws like me, things can’t be going too well for you.”

“They aren’t. Tell me, in the couple of weeks before the killings, did you see anybody out of the ordinary?”

“How do you mean?”

“Somebody walking the road, maybe not dressed for it?”

“Not that I recall.”

“Maybe renting a boat from you?”

“No, but then all we got are some canoes, a rowboat, and a little sailboat.”

I tried to picture Keck Davison’s “fishing trip.” “How about a seaplane?”

“Seaplane? Well, we do see them from time to time, but I don’t recall one this season as yet.”

“They pretty hard to miss?”

“Yessir. Those pontoons hit the water, you’d swear a truck was dragging a line of trashcans behind it.” Paine looked at me more seriously. “What do you have in mind, John?”

“If somebody other than Shea committed the murders, there had to be timing involved.”

“Timing.”

“Timing that was the product of planning, and planning that was the product of surveillance or at least a pretty careful survey of the place.”

The rocking got slower this time, but didn’t stop. “And you figure the somebody walked in or came by boat?”

“It’s a possibility.”

“Well, now. I guess if I was going to kill those poor people and hoped to pin the thing on Steve, I wouldn’t want to be seen or connected with the place in any way.”

“Granted.”

“That seems to argue for somebody sort of—what, staking the place out, not just walking or cruising past.”

“Any suggestions on where that might be?”

Ralph seemed to ponder it. “Just Old Tom Judson’s place.”

“Ma Judson’s brother?”

“Yeah. His new house—well, not so new anymore. In fact, it’s kind of gone to ruin since he died. Anyway, Old Tom’s place overlooks Shea’s house from up on the hillside.”

“It does?”

“Oh, not so’s to spoil his view. Old Tom’s, I mean. No, you can’t see Steve’s place from Tom’s windows, but if you position yourself just so, I believe you could still look down onto Steve’s property pretty well.”

“How do you know?”

“How? Why, Old Tom pointed it out to me, once when I was up to see him.”

“Judson pointed out Shea’s place below him?”

“Right.”

“What did Judson say?”

“He said something like—mind now, Old Tom was kind of a nasty sort—he said, ‘Quite an eyesore, isn’t it, Ralph?’ ”

“And what did you say?”

“I agreed with him.”

“And what did Judson say after that?”

“He didn’t. Just laughed. Kind of nasty, like I said.”

I swirled my brandy a little more. “You also said the house hasn’t been kept up.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Why not?”

A shrug that threw off the rocker’s creaking. “Ma didn’t care about it.”

“Ma Judson owns it now?”

“Sure. She didn’t care much for her brother, either, but that didn’t stop her from inheriting from him, did it?”

I downed the last of my brandy. “It never does.”

Paine inclined his head toward the empty snifter. “Anything else I can get you?”

I thought about the sheriff’s gun shop remark. “Yeah. You have a copy of this week’s
Uncle Henry’s
lying around?”

S
UNDAY DAWNED BRIGHT AND
clear, a little chill in the air that Ramona Paine assured me over breakfast would be gone by ten
A.M.
She also told me the road up the mountain to Tom Judson’s house was pretty steep for easy walking. I thanked her, saying I’d try it anyway.

Out in my trunk, I found the old pair of running shoes I kept there just in case. They weren’t hiking boots, but they were comfortable and went on over some cotton socks. Wearing rough chinos, and a long-sleeved chambray shirt, I took the plastic water bottle Ramona offered me and started down the road.

I’d seen the village a few times by car, but you learn a lot more about a place walking it than driving it. The housing stock declined in sophistication as I left the village center behind me. Tongue-and-groove clapboard and painted shutters and shingled roofs gave way to peeling plywood and taped plastic and tin roofs. Then came the trailers, some abandoned, two others so dilapidated you’d have thought they were, but for the variety of clothes on nylon ropes between storm-damaged trees.

Finally even the trailers gave way to woods interspersed with patches of meadow and clumps of wildflowers, individually sparse but collectively colorful against green and yellow backgrounds. Birds sang in the branches of now leafy trees, the weather beefing up the foliage since I’d last been there.

Reaching the paved drive for Judson’s place, I stepped over the padlocked chain with the orange telltales. The driveway angled left and up, and I started climbing, marveling at the size of the boulders somebody had bulldozed to the sides of the road to make even the one-lane width possible.

There were two switchbacks to the road, each about equal in length by the time my watch said it took to travel them. I got to the top of the second switchback about 10:10. Ramona was right about the chill, the air now flirting with seventy. I stopped to sit on a boulder and drink half my water, saving the rest for the top.

After another fifteen minutes, the driveway broadened onto a plateau, showing a typical split-level in disrepair, a two-car garage partly under the upper level. The condition of what would be the front yard made the Vandemeer place back in Calem look like a candidate for
Better Homes and Gardens
.

I walked up to the house, but the front door was barred by a couple of one-by-sixes nailed in an X-pattern across it. Moving to the garage, I used the palm of my hand to rub the grime and dust off a square, porthole window. Nothing but shadows and old tools and a couple of those jawed animal traps Patsy Willis had described. There was one blotch on the floor that looked awfully big to have been an oil drip. I pulled on the garage handle, but it was locked.

I moved around to the rear of the building. Just more high weeds, some little creature I never saw startled enough to flee through them, the stalks swaying from its passage. The back door had a wooden X nailed over it as well.

Finishing my circle of the house, I ended up in front of it again. Except for the obviously suburban structure, I had the impression of visiting an old temple in the jungle being reclaimed by nature, a kind of Elm Street Angkor Wat.

Moving toward the edge of the plateau, I understood what Ralph Paine had meant by view. Someone sitting inside a window of the house would enjoy a vista of surrounding peaks and valleys. However, at the drop-off I could look down and see the gash and slash area of Steven Shea’s house and Marseilles Pond itself, about five hundred feet beneath me. The line of sight to the back door of Shea’s house and the parking area was unobstructed. Even with the advantage of my elevation, I could barely make out Dag Gates’s roof contrasting in shade but not color with the trees around it. Looking south, I couldn’t see Ma Judson’s place at all. Looking north, I could make out the white, boxy Marseilles Inn clearly, the road running alongside it like a ribbon from a Christmas gift.

I walked the front edge of the clearing until coming upon the path I thought would lead to the back of Shea’s property. The trail seemed overgrown, but still followable. Finishing my water, I started down.

Though steeper than the driveway, the path was surprisingly easy, only a few places where I had to turn sideways, the edges of my running shoes acting as cleats to slow my descent. I’m not exactly an Indian scout, but I stopped occasionally to examine the ground and branches and so forth. No bits of torn clothing, but there were some indistinct footprints in flattened areas and a couple of broken-off twigs that indicated someone walked the path, even if not frequently, over the last few years.

When I got to the bottom, I could see Steven Shea’s rear door across his graveled parking area. My watch said it had taken me only ten minutes, and that including dawdling over the twigs and other signs.

Going up the steps to the door, I looked back above me. I knew that Judson’s driveway and house were there, but I wouldn’t have been able to tell that, and I had to bend my neck to the cricking point to see up to where I thought I’d been.

I moved around the deck to the front of the house, listening to the wind chimes and looking downslope toward the waterfront. Some spiky plants were already visible, coming up through Shea’s lawn, especially down near the water’s edge. Amazing. Nature reclaiming here, too.

Then I went back to thinking about what happened and how.

I want to kill three people, or at least one of them, and blame it on the fourth, Shea. I sit up on Judson’s driveway, watching the house below me. I do that for enough weekends, and I get a pretty good sense of Shea’s Friday night routine. Or, I already know the routine, and I just wait there that Friday, watching for him to go, then come down.

When do I pick up the crossbow and shoes?

Probably earlier that day, using the keys under the eave and the step, figuring Shea wouldn’t check the garage or his bedroom closet before going out for dinner necessaries. That way I don’t run a risk of being seen or heard by any of The Foursome before I’m ready.

Assume Willis was right about Hale Vandemeer and Sandra Newberg making a salad together. I’m the killer, and I’m approaching the back door. I hear two people in the kitchen, probably talking to each other over the clattering of cutlery. Because of the time it takes to reload, I need to do them one at a time. So, I move around to the front of the house instead. Slowly, maybe looping down toward the lakefront and using the brush as concealment. I see Vivian Vandemeer on the deck. I maneuver until I have a straight-on shot, or I make a little noise to attract her attention, maybe shaking a bush or two, get her walking over toward me.

Then I aim and fire and bring her down.

Reloading with the stirrup thing, I climb the steps and take Hale Vandemeer, coming out to check on his wife because he heard something. Probably not a scream, since he took the time to close the screen behind him.

Then I reload again and come over Vandemeer’s body and take Sandra Newberg coming out of the kitchen.

A cold, cold-blooded sequence.

I leave through the kitchen, laying the crossbow on the path to the gravel car park for Shea to find. Then I climb back up to Judson’s house.

No. No, that would leave me kind of trapped. But I can’t go out toward Ma Judson’s, because it’s a dead end, and her dogs would go nuts. Dwight Schoonmaker realized that from one visit. I’ve been here long enough to stake things out, I’m not going to miss the obvious.

Which leaves the road or the water. All the killer has to do is walk up the road, watching and listening for first Shea, then emergency vehicles, to come down from the village, hiding when they do. Or have a boat somewhere along the waterfront, a little less likely because it’s a little more exposed to Dag Gates or anybody else going by in a boat themselves, but still possible.

All in all, simple enough. Awfully subtle, and distant, for Las Hermanas. A good fit for Schoonmaker’s evil-competitor theory, if the theory itself made sense. One thing about Schoonmaker’s idea did make sense.

Somebody had to have spent some time up here, getting comfortable with the setting and developing the plan. And somebody other than Ralph Paine might have seen a part of that.

Jack and Jill knew I was coming before Ma Judson did, but I don’t think by much.

She was feeding them outside their fenced enclosure, and they suddenly bolted up the road toward me. It was the first time I’d walked the part of the road that went over to her place, having taken the lakeside path the last time I was there. Her section seemed less maintained than Shea’s, the ruts deeper and the vegetation encroaching more on the sides and growing in the center of the lane between where tires would roll.

The dogs came to a skidding stop about ten feet in front of me, baying and woofing more than growling. I stood my ground, then did a deep knee bend, resting my butt on my ankles. “Hey, hey, what’s the matter?”

The dogs quieted a little, circling each other like excited young skaters practicing figure eights. Down the road, Ma Judson stood with legs apart and fists on hips. The same green felt hat and the same buckskin jacket and, as far as I could see, the same everything else she’d worn five days before.

“Christ come to earth, you back again?”

“Afraid so.”

“The bad penny. What is it this time?”

“Same as last time, just some different questions.”

A labored sigh. “Well, long’s you don’t expect me to feed you, too. C’mon up.”

She went onto her porch and into the front door of the log house. Jack and Jill ran ahead of me, then ran back, then did their figure eights using me as the center point for the rest of the way. By the time I’d reached the porch steps, Ma Judson was back outside, another bucket of lemonade and two more glasses in her hands.

“Set.”

I sat in one of the rough-hewn rocking chairs.

“Say when.”

I let her fill it, then drank about half.

Pouring some more for me, she said, “Been spending yourself, have you?”