The Beginning (26 page)

The day was warm, the air salty with the ocean spray, the sun high overhead. The Cove had never looked more beautiful, Quinlan thought, as he helped Sally out of their rental car.

“It's a picture postcard,” she said, looking around. “There are the four old men playing cards around the barrel. Look, there are at least six cars parked in front of the World's Greatest Ice Cream Shop. There's Martha coming out of the Safeway with two sacks of groceries. There's Reverend Vorhees walking with his head down like he's got to tell someone that he's sinned badly. How could anything bad happen here? It looks perfect. All calm, nobody running around waving an ax, yelling, no kids ruining buildings with graffiti.”

“Yeah,” Quinlan said. He was frowning.

“What's wrong?”

He shook his head. His intuition. She poked him in the ribs. He grabbed her hand and said only, “It's too perfect. Why is that, I wonder? How did it get to be so perfect? Look at all that paint, Sally. It's fresh. Nothing's run-down. Nothing's old. Everything is in tip-top shape.

“But enough of this postcard place. We're meeting David and two FBI agents from the Portland office over at Thelma's at two o'clock. It's about two now.”

“I'll meet them and then go to Amabel's house, all right?”

He looked worried, and she punched him again on his arm. “Do you think she's going to lock me in a root cellar? Don't be silly, James. She's my aunt.”

“Okay. I'll be along as soon as I can. Make sure Amabel knows that.”

David Mountebank looked tired. He looked harassed. When he introduced Quinlan to the man and woman agents, he didn't sound like a happy camper. He sounded like he was being bossed around, which occasionally did happen when the feds came in and treated the local law as yokels. It had happened a lot in the past, but not as much now. He sure hoped that wasn't the case here. In the sixteen-week training program at Quantico, agents were told never to usurp local prerogatives.

Maybe he was wrong. Maybe David was depressed about these killings. He knew he'd be as depressed as hell himself.

Corey Harper and Thomas Shredder didn't look too happy either. They all shook hands and sat down in Thelma Nettro's parlor. Martha came in and beamed at them. “Sally. Mr. Quinlan. How nice to see you again. Now, would everyone like some coffee? And some of my special New Jersey cheesecake?”

“New Jersey cheesecake, Martha?” Quinlan asked as he kissed her cheek.

“It's better than any cheesecake from New York,” she said and gave Sally a brief hug. “You folks get on with your business. I'll be right back.”

“How's Thelma doing, Martha?” Sally asked.

“She's primping right now. Not for you, Sally, but for Mr. Quinlan. She even had me go out and buy her some pumpkin peach lipstick, if you can imagine.” Martha tsked and left the large parlor.

“I'd like to get to work here,” Thomas Shredder said with enough impatience in his voice to make Quinlan want to loll back, lock his arms behind his head, and take a snooze, just to aggravate him.

Shredder was about thirty, tall and lanky, and very intense, one of those men Quinlan tried to avoid like the plague. They made him nervous simply because they never laughed, wouldn't know a joke if it bit them, usually saw the forest but never the individual trees.

As for the woman, Special Agent Corey Harper, she hadn't said anything yet. She was tall, with light hair and very pretty blue-gray eyes. She also looked eager, sitting on the edge of the sofa, her notebook on her knee, her ballpoint pen poised above an open page. She looked as if she hadn't been out of Quantico for very long. He'd bet the Portland office was her first assignment.

“Corey told me all the excitement you had back in Washington,” David Mountebank said, ignoring Thomas Shredder. “That was something. You okay, Sally?”

“Yes, fine now. They still haven't caught my father, but James promises me they will. It's just a matter of time.”

Quinlan thought that Thomas Shredder was going to explode. He smiled at the man and said, “I came here looking for Sally. I was a private investigator—that was my cover—hired to locate two old people who disappeared over three years ago in this area. And that was true. These folk did disappear in this area. Funny thing was that when I started asking questions, bad things started happening. Sally, tell them about the woman's screams.”

She did, leaving out the fact that Amabel hadn't believed it was really a woman screaming.

“We came across a woman's body the following morning when we were walking down the cliffs,” Quinlan said. “She'd been murdered and thrown off the cliffs. Not a very nice thing to do. It's difficult not to believe that this was the same woman Sally heard screaming on two different nights. She must have been held prisoner somewhere close to Sally's aunt's cottage. Why was she being held prisoner? We have no idea. Now, I'm willing to wager the farm that the murders are tied directly to these missing folks.”

“Yes, yes, we know all this,” Shredder said, and he actually swatted at Quinlan as if he were a fly to be removed from the bread.

“We also know your opinion about this so-called tie-in. However, as yet we don't have any real proof that there is a tie-in. What we've got is two murders, one a longtime local in Doc Spiver and the other a woman from the subdivision, not at all local in the same sense. What we need is a tie-in between the two of them, not between them and the disappearance of these old folk over three years ago.”

“Well, then,” Quinlan said, “David, why don't you bring me up to date. What have you done since I flew home last week?”

Shredder interrupted, his voice fast and sharp, “Sheriff Mountebank didn't do much of anything. Ms. Harper and I have been here since Monday, not long enough to solve the crimes yet, but we're getting close, very close.”

Corey Harper cleared her throat. “Actually, David had collected interviews from just about everyone in town. They're very thorough, but no one could tell him much of anything. Everyone is shocked and very depressed about the deaths, particularly Doc Spiver's.”

“We've already started to repeat the interviews,” Thomas Shredder said. “Someone must have seen something. We'll get it out of them. Old people have difficulty remembering unless they're prodded just right. It takes special training to learn how to do it.”

“Nah,” Quinlan said. “I did it perfectly even before my training. Another thing, David knows all these people. He'd know when they were lying and what about.”

“That remains to be seen,” Shredder said. Corey Harper looked embarrassed.

Martha appeared in the doorway, a huge tray resting on her arms.

Quinlan got up and took it from her. “He's such a nice boy,” she said to Sally.

“Right there, Mr. Quinlan. Yes, that's right. Now, I know you don't want me listening to all this important talk, so I'll leave you with everything. You'll manage?”

“Yes, thank you, Martha,” Quinlan said. “How's Ed?”

“Oh, that poor man. Thelma won't leave him alone. Now she's accusing him of compromising me and she's going to buy a shotgun. He's in the hospital right now having tests for that prostate of his. Poor man.”

Thomas Shredder looked at Corey Harper, then at the tray. She bit her lip and began to place cups on saucers. Quinlan grinned at her and began to do the same. Sally poured a cup and said, “Cream, David?”

Thomas Shredder sat there while everyone served each other. Quinlan gave him a big grin and pointed to the last cup on the tray. “Help yourself, Thomas. Ah, best hurry—I bet these New Jersey cheesecakes are going to be inhaled.”

“My, this is beyond delicious,” Corey Harper said and took the last bite of her slice of cheesecake.

“James and I want to ask Martha to come back to Washington with us,” said Sally. “She's the best cook I know. Her pasta makes you weep.”

Quinlan knew that Shredder was going to blow up any minute. Well, he'd pushed the ass far enough. He said easily, “Forget the interviews, Thomas. We need to come at this from another angle. I know it sounds weird that the missing persons would have anything to do with the two murders, but the thing is that up until about the time Marge and Harve Jensen disappeared, The Cove was a run-down old shanty of a town. No paint on anything, potholes in the road, fences falling over, even the trees sagging, all the kids gone, just old people left, living on Social Security. My question is, why is The Cove so different now from what it was three, four years ago? Why did everything here begin to wake up about the same time that Harve and Marge disappeared?”

Corey said, “I didn't realize the timing.”

“I did,” David said, “but I never questioned it, Quinlan, for the simple reason that it was common knowledge that Doc Spiver had come into a lot of money right around then. Since he didn't have any heirs, he invested the money and used all the proceeds to improve the town. But you don't think so, Quinlan?”

“I think it's worth checking into, closely. I remember you telling me that in Doc Spiver's will he left his estate to the town and it amounted to about twenty thousand dollars. If he was that low, then the town would start sliding again, really soon, don't you think? Makes you wonder, doesn't it?

“I'll call Savich—he' s a computer nerd at the Bureau—and get him going on it. Tell me which bank and the account number, David. Sally and I will be staying here. Give me a call, and I'll get to Savich.”

“Is that Dillon Savich?” Corey Harper asked, looking up.

“Yeah, he's a genius with a computer, but don't tell him that because he'll think you're sucking up.”

“I know. I did tell him that when I was in training at Quantico. He gave a couple of great lectures, and yeah, he probably did think I was sucking up.”

“I've never heard of this Savich guy, at least not more than three times,” Thomas Shredder said. “Who cares about a computer nerd? They're fine in their place, but this is the real world. What we do here is what really counts. Let's get back to why we're here in this godforsaken place.”

David said slowly, “Regardless of whether or not the missing persons are somehow involved in these murders, what you're implying in a very subtle way is a tough pill to swallow, Quinlan. I've known these people most all my life. They're a bunch of tough old birds; they've had to be to survive all the economic disasters we've had. That one of them is a murderer curdles my breakfast. More than one of them murderers? No way.”

“It's more than a tough pill,” Thomas Shredder said with a goodly dose of sarcasm. “You're paranoid, Quinlan. That's nuts.”

Quinlan shrugged. “This town looks like a Hollywood set. I remember that was my first thought when I came here. I want to know why and how that happened.”

“All right, we've got a lead,” David said, leaning forward. “I'm going to check more closely into Doc Spiver's bank account. Now, I've gotten together all the accounts for all the missing persons reported in this area for the past four years.” David drew a deep breath. “There's about sixty.”

“Whoa,” Corey Harper said.

“James is wrong about this,” Sally said. “My aunt has lived here for more than twenty years. She couldn't be part of a murder conspiracy of this magnitude. She couldn't.”

“I hope I am wrong, Sally,” he said as he took her hand. It was cold. He poured her some coffee and put the fragile china cup between her hands to warm them. “But there's lots of questions here. I can't think of another way to go on this.”

“I can't either,” David said.

“Well, I can,” said Thomas Shredder, rising to stand in front of the fireplace. He struck a pose, looking like Hercule Poirot ready to deliver his solution. All he needed was a mustache to twirl.

“I hope this is good, Thomas,” Quinlan said. “We've paid our admission. Now on with the show.”

“Pinning these murders on several of the townspeople just doesn't make sense. As to tying it all to David's missing persons, let's just forget about that.”

“But, Thomas,” Corey began, but he raised a hand to silence her.

“It's a theory, nothing more. What we've got is solid fact. Let's get specific. I looked into Reverend Hal and Sherry Vorhees. They've lived here for twenty-seven years, true, but before that, they were in Tempe, Arizona. They had two little adopted boys. The two little boys ended up dead within a year after they came to the Vorheeses. One fell out of a tree and broke his neck. The other one got himself burned to death when he turned on the gas stove. Both were accidents, at least that's what was reported and accepted. Everyone felt real bad about it, said the Vorheeses were the nicest people, and he was a reverend, and why would God take both their children?

“But there were questions. It seems a couple of other children had accidents during the time the Vorheeses lived there. Then the Vorheeses left and came here. There weren't any more children.”

He waited for applause and he got it.