Greely's Cove (4 page)

His plan began to form as he steered into the drive of the Old Schooner Motel, where a “Vacancy” sign shimmered in pink neon, and he felt better than he had all day.

“I’m going to make a suggestion, Sonny Butch, so listen up.”

Liquid Larry, who called nearly every man and boy he met “Sonny Butch,” leaned across the bar until his beefy face was mere inches from Mitch Nistler’s. “You go ahead and finish up that triple threat, you hear? Then you ease off that stool and get your ass down the road while you can still drive. What d’ya say?”

Mitch raised his glassy eyes and tried to return the barkeep’s diplomatic smile, but his facial muscles weren’t cooperating. “You cuttin’ me off, Liquid? ’S that what I’m hearing?”

“Like I said, Sonny Butch, just a suggestion. I don’t want to lose any of my best customers.” The diplomatic grin widened. “Besides, I expect your boss is probably waiting for you over at the chapel. I hear you boys got yourselves a suicide last night.”

Mitch cringed at the mention of his boss, Matt Kronmiller. It was indeed likely that the old batfucker was waiting at the Chapel of the Cove, no doubt cussing his assistant embalmer with every passing minute and working up a good case of mad to hurl at Mitch when he finally showed up. “’S that what you hear?”

“That’s what I hear,” said Liquid, “suicide. Artist lady who lived with her weird kid over on Second—ran that little art store next to the Mariners’ Bank. Used to be married to the Trosper boy, Carl.”

“Matt doesn’t like his employees to talk about the decedents,” said Mitch, downing the last of his drink. “It’s not professional. Just like saying ‘body’ in front of the bereaved isn’t professional. You’re s’posed to say ‘Mr. Smith,’ or ‘Mrs. Hansen,’ but never ‘The Body.’” He thumped the mug down on the bar. “Do me one more time, Liquid. Then I’m out of here, I promise.”

The barkeep’s smile fell away, and his beefy face hardened. He drew himself up to his full height, which was six-three, and sucked in his gut. Though well over fifty, Liquid Larry was an awesome sight behind his bar, surrounded by sparkling glasses and mugs hung upside down in long racks. Few rowdy patrons ever argued with him if he requested their absence.

“I’m tryin’ to be reasonable with you, young fella,” he said to Mitch in a low voice. “I’m not throwin’ you out, you understand, but I don’t want you to embarrass yourself, either. Four triple threats is enough booze for anybody.”

Mitch Nistler chuckled hoarsely and plugged a Pall Mall into his lips. “You of all people should know that I’m not just
anybody,
” he said, coughing out smoke. “I’m a pro. I could suck down eight or ten of these things and shave your wife’s snatch with a straight razor, and she’d do nothin’ but smile, smile, smile!”

“
Now
I’m throwin’ you out, Sonny Butch.”

Liquid Larry didn’t mind rough talk, and God knows he’d heard enough of it through twenty years in the Marine Corps and another fifteen running a blue-collar roadhouse. In fact, he could go toe-to-toe with the raunchiest bos’n and cuss the son of a goatfucker blue. Only one subject was off limits: his family. If you talked about his wife, kids, or mother, you didn’t cuss, a lesson that Mitch Nistler learned the hard way.

The Old Schooner Motel was rich in middle-class tackiness, but it was also comfortable and quiet. In fact,
quiet
was not the right word, thought Carl;
tomblike
was more accurate, which was not surprising in the dead of the off-season. His room had vinyl-covered furniture, ham-handed seascapes on the walls, and fake wood paneling in the kitchenette. But the TV worked well, and everything was spotless, if not slightly antiseptic.

After a long and languorous shower, he argued with himself about whether he was too hungry to sleep or too tired to eat. He had started the day on Eastern Standard Time and was ending it on Pacific, having gained three hours during the flight from Washington, D.C. In Greely’s Cove it was a few minutes after 7:00 p.m., but Carl’s bioclock insisted it was past ten. He was tired as hell since he had slept only fitfully on the plane, but he was also ravenous: the airline’s food had proved inedible except for a pathetic little bag of cashews that a flight attendant had dropped in his lap between Minneapolis and Billings.

His gnarling stomach won the argument, so he decided to trot down the street to Bailey’s Seafood Emporium, a rustic establishment founded long before his birth and renowned for its steamed mussels. He threw on a fresh shirt, a gray corduroy sport coat, and his parka, because a glance out the window told him that the rain had resumed with a vengeance.

“Carl!”

The voice stopped him as he was about to push through the glass door from the motel lobby into the downpour.

“Carl Trosper!”

He turned around and saw a plump, fiery redheaded woman behind the registration desk, not the young, gangly girl who had waited on him when he checked in. This woman had snapping green eyes made enormous with eyeliner and a blue denim jumpsuit that flowed over an amply curvaceous body.

Carl took a halting step toward the desk, openmouthed. The woman smiled hugely, and Carl was transported back to his school days at Suquamish High, when the owner of this dazzling smile wore the school’s colors. She had been a cheerleader with flaming pigtails, a spanking high-kicker in her bulky green sweater, tiny silver skirt, and satiny green panties.

“
Sandy?
” he breathed, scarcely above a whisper. “Sandy Cunningham, is that you?”

She laughed sweetly. “It used to be, but it’s Sandy Zolten now. My husband, Ken, and I own this place. We live in the big old house across the alley. Carl, you’ve hardly changed at all—except for the beard, of course!”

Carl felt his face beginning to flush. In high school he and a close buddy, Renzy Dawkins, had worked on the school newspaper as photographers. During games and pep assemblies, they had taken pains to position themselves in front of Sandy, as close to floor level as possible, supposedly to get action pix of the cheerleaders for the paper. What they really wanted, however, were “beaver shots” whenever Sandy kicked especially high—outtakes, of course, that never made the paper. Only the photographers’ wallets. Carl’s skill had earned him a nickname that he hoped no one still remembered.

“It’s nice to see you, Sandy. You—uh—you look terrific. I mean it.”

“Oh, come on! I’m three sizes bigger than I was in high school. I guess that’s what motherhood does for you.”

“I don’t care what size you wear; the years have been good.”

“Still the charmer, I see.”

“Me? A charmer? Since when?”

“Since
always!
Every girl in the school would’ve killed to go out with you, and you know it!”

“God, I must’ve been deaf, dumb, and blind. I wish someone would’ve had the human decency to tell me what a hunk I was.” They laughed loudly. To Carl, laughing seemed like something he’d not done in a century.

Further chitchat revealed that Sandy had married her college boyfriend, an accounting major from Spokane. They had lived and worked in Portland, Oregon, for six years—Ken as an associate in an accounting firm and Sandy as a real-estate agent—before deciding to go into business for themselves. Sandy’s mother had written to say that the Old Schooner was up for sale and within the Zoltens’ reach, a nice little business that was manageable by a hardworking couple.

The rest of the story hardly needed telling. Two daughters, Teri and Amber, sixteen and thirteen. An English setter, neutered. Kiwanis, PTA, summer vacations in Colorado. Middle-class story, predictable as hell, but easy on the ears. “I envy you,” said Carl during a pause, meaning it. “You’ve got the life most of us dream about. I’m glad for you, I really am.”

“I’d ask how
you’ve
been, but I already know,” she said, fixing her gaze on the countertop rather than on Carl’s face. “I can’t tell you how sorry I am. Everybody in town loved Lorna, and even though you guys were divorced...” She stammered, not knowing what to say next. Finally: “If there’s anything we can do, all you have to do is ask.”

“Thanks. I appreciate that.”

Sandy wondered aloud whether he needed help at the house that had once been his and Lorna’s. Cleaning, maybe, or cooking. Someone to look after Jeremy.

“I’ll know more tomorrow,” he answered. “I talked to Lorna’s sister on the phone this morning, before I left D.C. She and her mother have come over from Seattle, and we’re getting together first thing in the morning. Jeremy’s staying with them.”

“I know—down the street at the West Cove.”

Carl smiled: no secrets in a town this size. He had picked the Old Schooner because Lorna’s sister and mother, two people he had disliked thoroughly from the very moment he met them, were staying at the West Cove Motor Inn. Though he was anxious to see his son, he wanted no part of his former in-laws, at least not tonight. Tomorrow would be soon enough.

Suddenly the front door whooshed open, admitting a bounding teenaged girl who wore a slouchy camouflaged jacket over a man’s dress shirt, the shirttails of which flapped below the jacket with her every stride toward the reception desk. A second look told Carl that this was the same gangling kid who had been working the registration desk when he arrived, but now she was costumed in New Wave grub, replete with Cuisinart hairdo and heavily made-up eyes, ready for a night out with a pair of chums who waited outside in a car. Despite the studied dishevelment and the layer of cosmetic goo, she was a remarkably pretty girl, blessed with her mother’s huge green eyes and rusty hair.

“Mom, I need twenty dollars. Can I—”

“
Teri!
” Sandy’s tone carried a mother’s rebuke. “I’m having a conversation with a guest.”

“Oh, I’m sorry,” said the girl, her cheeks growing suddenly red. She cast a lightning-quick glance at Carl, who smiled.

“Teri, this is Mr. Carl Trosper.”

“I know. I was behind the desk when he checked in.”

“Mr. Trosper and I were friends in high school, back before the Civil War.”

“Hi, Teri,” said Carl, offering his hand. The youngster shook it ever so briefly, as though it were a rubber glove full of worms. For a split second she seemed on the verge of offering condolences for the dead Lorna, like a grown-up would have, but adolescent bashfulness intervened and choked off her words.

“Now, you said something about money?” asked Sandy. “Yeah, Gina and Leah and I are driving up to Kingston to see
The Karate Kid
, and we’re going to stop at the Pizza Hut on the way back, and I only have six dollars and seventy-five cents, and I’ll pay you back out of next week’s check, and—”

“Honey, twenty dollars seems a little steep for a movie and a pizza. Besides, you’ve already seen
The Karate Kid.
”

“Mom, we’ve seen it twice, but we want to see it again before
Karate Kid II
comes out. Can I
please
have twenty dollars? I owe Gina and Leah, because they bought the food last time we went out.”

The muscles in Sandy Zolten’s face tightened with apprehension, and she asked who was driving.

“Leah,” answered Teri. Leah Solheim was seventeen, went the prepared statement, and a very good driver. She had gotten an A in driver’s ed, or her mother would never have trusted her with the family’s brand-new Toyota.

“Okay,” said Sandy with stiff reluctance, digging into the till for a twenty. “But I want you to come right home after the Pizza Hut. And remember: no beer, no dope, and no chasing around in boys’ cars—”

“
Mother!
”

“—and stay away from strangers, you hear? We’ve had more than our share of weirdness in this town lately.”

“Mother,
please
.” Teri cast a darting glance at Carl, who pretended disinterest in this mother-daughter tête-à-tête. “It’s not like we’re going to Miami or something. Kingston’s not even ten minutes from here and we’re only going to see a movie and eat some pizza. There’s absolutely nothing to worry about.”

She snatched up the twenty and crammed it into her camouflaged jacket. “Thanks, Mom. Nice to see you again, Mr. Trosper.” She bounded to the front door, turned and blew a kiss to Sandy, and was gone.

“Seems like a great kid,” said Carl, a comment that hung feebly in Teri’s aftermath.

“She
is
a great kid,” said Sandy. “Gets good grades, puts in a shift every day here on the desk, doesn’t drink or do dope that we know of. Oh, we had a minor incident with marijuana about a year ago, but I think she learned her lesson. As teenaged girls go, she’s good as gold.” But the look of taut apprehension still had not left Sandy’s face. “I just hope I can get through her high-school years without ending up in the state home, that’s all.”

“Oh, you’ll make it.” Carl smiled. “No matter what you moms think, there isn’t much trouble a kid can get into in these parts. Believe me, I know from years of trying.”

“Ordinarily I’d agree with you, but things have gotten a little strange around here lately.”

“How so?”

Sandy fixed him with a green-eyed stare that conveyed something stronger than the usual mild worry that mothers endure over teenaged daughters who go out for movies and pizzas. This was fear, undiluted and potent. She opened her mouth to speak, then cut herself off. “Carl, you don’t need this. You’ve got enough trouble of your own. Look, you were probably going out for some dinner, and I’m tying you up.”

“Bullshit. Just because we haven’t seen each other since high school doesn’t mean we’re not friends anymore. If something’s worrying you, I’d like to hear about it.” He leaned an elbow on the counter. “For old time’s sake, if nothing else. Now what’s this about things getting strange in good old Greely’s Cove?”

Sandy took a pack of Merits from a drawer under the counter and lit one. “Well,” she began, exhaling a cloud of smoke, “about eight months ago, people started disappearing, just like they walked off the face of the earth. The first one was a friend of Teri’s, a girl named Jennifer Spenser, only sixteen. That was—let’s see—about the first week of June. At first everyone thought she’d run away with some boy, naturally. But her parents, Tom and Linda, said she hadn’t taken any luggage or clothes, not even her makeup kit. Besides, she’d seemed perfectly happy at home, like any other normal high-school kid. Stu Bromton, our chief of police—remember Stu?”