David Mountebank leaned against the side of Amabel’s cottage. It looked like it had been freshly painted not six months ago. The dark-green trim around the windows was very crisp. “What the hell’s really going on, Quinlan?”
He sighed. “I can’t tell you. Call it national security, David.”
“I’d like to call that bullshit.”
“I can’t tell you,” Quinlan repeated. He met David’s eye. He never flinched. David could have drawn a gun on him and he wouldn’t have flinched.
“All right,” David said finally. “Have it your way, at least for now. You promise me it doesn’t have anything to do with the two murders?”
“It doesn’t. The more I mull it over, the more I think the woman’s murder is somehow connected to Harve and Marge Jensen’s disappearance three years ago, even though just yesterday I told you I couldn’t imagine it. I don’t know how or why, but you’ve got things that don’t smell right. Well, I have things that just twist and turn in my gut. That’s my intuition. I’ve learned over the years never to ignore it. Things are somehow connected. I just have no idea how or why or if I’m just plain not thinking straight.
“As for Sally, just let it go, David. I’d consider that I owed you good if you’d just let it go.”
“It was two murders, Quinlan.”
“Doc Spiver?”
“Yeah. I just got a call from the M.E. in Portland, a woman who was trained down in San Francisco and really knows her stuff. Would that there were M.E.s everywhere who knew what they were doing. I got his body to her late last night, and she agreed to do the autopsy immediately, bless her. She determined there was no way in hell he would have sat himself down in the rocking chair, put the gun in his mouth, and pulled the trigger.”
“That takes care of the theory that Doc Spiver murdered the woman and then felt so guilty that he killed himself.”
“Blows it straight to hell.”
“You know what it sounds like to me? Just maybe the person really believed everyone would think Doc Spiver killed himself. Maybe an older person who doesn’t know all about things a good M.E. can determine. Your man, Ponser, didn’t know, after all. You could say you just lucked out because of how good the M.E. is in Portland.”
“That sounds right to me.” He sighed. “What we’ve got is a killer loose, Quinlan, and I’m so stuck I don’t know what to do.
“My men and I have been questioning every damned person in this beautiful little town, and just like with Laura Strather, no one knows a damned thing. I still can’t buy it that one of the local folk is involved in this.”
“One of them is, David, no way around it.”
“You want me to take plaster casts of those footprints?”
“No, don’t bother. But take a look, one impression goes deeper than the other. You ever see anything like that?”
David was down on his hands and knees, studying the footprints. He measured the depth with his pinky finger, just as Quinlan had done. “Strange,” he said. “I don’t have a clue.”
“I was thinking the guy had a limp, but it wouldn’t look like that if he did. There’d be more of a rolling to one side, but there’s not.”
“You got me, Quinlan.” David stood up and looked toward the ocean. “It’s going to be a beautiful day. I used to bring my kids here at least twice a week for the World’s Greatest Ice Cream. I haven’t wanted them to get near The Cove since that first murder.”
And, Quinlan knew, besides that killer, there was another man here who was out to make Sally believe she was crazy. It had to be her husband, Scott Brainerd.
He dusted his hands off on his dark-brown corduroy pants. “Oh, David, which one got to you first?”
“What?”
“Which of your daughters got her arms around your neck first?”
David laughed. “The littlest one. She climbed right up my leg like a monkey. Her name’s Deirdre.”
James left David Mountebank and returned to Thelma’s Bed and Breakfast.
When he opened the door to his tower room, Sally was standing in the doorway of the bathroom. Her hair was wet and plastered to her head, strands falling to her shoulders. She had a towel in her left hand. She stared at him.
She was stark naked.
She was so damned thin and so damned perfect, and he realized it in just the split second before she pulled the towel in front of herself.
“Where did you go?” she asked, still not moving, just standing there, wet and thin and perfect, and covered with a white towel.