Dead Winter Read online

  I visited Marc at Shirley once. They gave us a cubicle furnished with a table bolted to the floor and wooden chairs. A guard stood inside the door watching us.

  “You look good,” I told him.

  “Doing some lifting. Not a hell of a lot else.”

  “Write to your father.”

  “Is that an order?”

  “It’s a suggestion.”

  He shrugged. “Not much to say.”

  “Tell him you’re all right, that’s all.”

  “Maybe I will.”

  He gazed past me toward the guard. “I figured it out,” he told me after a moment. “Took me a long time.”

  “Figured out what?”

  “Who stashed the coke on Constance.”

  “You’re telling me you didn’t.”

  “That’s what I told Garrett, and I think he believed me. The fact that I let him plea-bargain don’t mean I did it.”

  “Who, then?”

  “The fuckin’ professor. Bowen. Debbie’s old man.”

  “What makes you think so?”

  “Process of elimination. I didn’t. Debbie didn’t. None of the others would’ve. He hated me, hated me and Debbie being married. She wouldn’t listen to him, so he showed her what kind of a person I was.” He laughed ironically. “Thing was, I gave up all that stuff for her. Promised I’d live clean, get a real job. I loved her, see, Brady.” He narrowed his eyes and shrugged in the unmistakably characteristic manner of one who has learned how to survive in prison. “There’s a lesson somewhere. I ain’t all that well educated. But I’m figuring it out.”

  “Don’t make too much of it, Marc,” I told him. “Professor Bowen is one man—even if you’re right about him.”

  “I got plenty of time to work on it,” he said.

  When Marc got out of prison, he returned to live with Des. He couldn’t get his bartending job back, so he hung around the marina doing odd jobs and complaining that no one would hire a guy who’d done time. He finally landed a job as a bouncer at one of the strip joints that are scattered along Route 1 north of Boston, the suburban equivalent of the combat zone. That’s where he met Maggie.

  Marc married her the summer before she died. I met her only once, that same summer. Des and I had planned to take Constance on a bluefish hunt around Plum Island. When I joined him at the marina where She was moored, I found Marc there, along with a slender girl wearing cutoff blue jeans and the top to a bikini.

  “Ah, Brady Coyne, this is Maggie,” said Marc. “My wife,” he added, grinning at the young woman as if it were a private joke.

  She had a great cascade of coal black hair, very large eyes the color of hot fudge, and an infectious smile. She was standing next to Marc on the dock, one arm draped possessively over his shoulder. She was nearly his height, close to six feet, and looked to be about his age. They could have been twins with their deep tans and dark flashing smiles. “Nice to meetcha,” she said. “Hope you don’t mind us messin’ up your fishing.”

  I assured her that nobody messed up my fishing except perverse fish.

  Marc took the wheel and steered us out into the estuary where the Merrimack met the ocean. Des and I trolled Rebels while Maggie sat next to Marc. It was a still, hot day, and Marc couldn’t put us onto the blues. Des and I drank beer and stared at the sea. He had the faraway look on his face that told me he was thinking about Connie. I didn’t intrude.

  After a while I went forward to sit on the bulkhead to catch a breeze. A few minutes later Maggie joined me. She squatted beside me and shucked off her shorts, which briefly startled me until I saw that she had the bottom to her bikini underneath.

  “So you’re a lawyer, huh?” she said.

  “Yes. A lawyer.”

  “I’m a dancer,” she offered.

  “Mm.”

  “Did a lot of ballet when I was a kid. I got too big for that, though. Went through a fat stage when I was about twelve. Gotta keep working on my weight. Lot of people, they don’t think the kind of dancing I do is really, you know, dancing.”

  I sipped my beer and watched a ruckus of gulls circle off toward the beach.

  “Okay, so I’m a stripper,” she persisted. She put her hand on my arm. I turned to look at her. Her eyes were earnest. “You probably think—”

  “I don’t judge people, Maggie.”

  She smiled. “Everybody judges strippers, Mr. Coyne. I don’t wanna make it more than it is, see. We take off our clothes, and the guys, they get their jollies. But there’s kind of an art to it. I mean, you gotta look right, sure. But there are girls, they got great bods, and if they can’t dance, the guys, they get bored. I mean, anyone can stand there and flop their boobs around, pretend to hump someone. When I do it, I don’t think about what the guys are thinkin’. I think about the music, moving to it, trying to be graceful and pretty and sexy.”

  I shrugged.

  “Look,” she said. “I mean, I’ve got small breasts, actually, compared to most of ’em. But I’ve got great legs and a good ass and I know how to dance. The guys like me. They always give me a good hand. They don’t say dirty things to me, like they do to some of the girls. At least, not usually. Anyhow, I quit dancing. I just did it for the money. Now Marc’s takin’ care of me. How old are you, anyhow?”

  I told her. She cocked her head at me. “Jeez, I would’ve said two, three years older’n that.”

  “Most people think I look younger than I am,” I said, feigning hurt feelings.

  “Aw, jeez, I’m sorry. Things like that, they just come out of my mouth. I’m kinda stupid that way. It must be exciting, being a lawyer. You rich?”

  “Moderately rich. Not very exciting. Lots of paperwork.”

  “I hate paperwork. Did lousy at school.”

  And she went on that way, her mind skipping disconnectedly from thought to thought, things coming out of her mouth in a random fashion that I found both disconcerting and charming.

  Before the day ended, I decided that I liked her. And later Des confided in me, with some perplexity, that he liked her, too. “You’d never know she had been a, ah, performer, Brady. Quiet, well-mannered, considerate of her old father-in-law, and a dutiful wife. Reminds me a bit of Connie, actually. That same ingenuous, unpretentious quality. A little girl, really. That stage that completely passed over Kat.”

  Now Maggie had been killed, and Marc was being held, and I wondered if it was possible that Marc was not guilty.

  I recalled one other thing Des had said that day on the boat with Marc and Maggie when the bluefish didn’t bite. “I wish,” Des said of Marc’s new bride, “that my son treated her better.”

  So I tooled through the summer night, remembering the dead stripper and singing about Good Vibrations with my Beach Boys tape.

  The vibrations I was feeling were decidedly not good.

  3

  ORANGE LIGHTS GLOWED FROM the first-floor windows of Des’s house. Kat’s new Saab 9000 Turbo was parked behind a battered Dodge pickup that I assumed belonged to Marc. In front of the truck was Des’s new Buick Skylark. I pulled in behind the Saab. It was sleek and fast looking. My little BMW looked positively dowdy next to it.

  I went around to the back door. I tapped on the glass with my knuckles, then went inside. Des’s old basset hound, Barney, was lying on a tattered rug beside the kitchen stove. He thumped his tail a couple times when he saw me and then propped himself up on his stubby legs. He bellied over to me. He moved like a snake. His body moved first and then his skin seemed to follow along. He reminded me of a Slinky. I reached down and tickled his ears. He rolled his rheumy eyes at me.

  “Anybody home?” I called.

  “In here,” came Des’s voice.

  I went into one of the sitting rooms, of which there were three. Des and Kat and Marc were all there, sitting at opposite corners of the room, sipping from mugs and studying the patterns on the big oval braided rug. It didn’t appear that they had been talking. Barney pushed past me. He went over to Des and flopped d
own beside his chair. Des reached down and absentmindedly stroked his belly. Then he looked up at me.

  “Thanks for coming, Brady.”

  I held my hand to him and he took it. His hand felt thin in my grip.

  “You call, I come.”

  He nodded. He was wearing a brown cardigan with frayed cuffs over an undershirt. He had on wrinkled chino pants and bedroom slippers. He looked old. “After I called you I called Kat. She went and got Marc.”

  I went over to Kat, who was tucked into a big wing chair with her feet under her. She lifted her face and smiled at me. “You have come to save us,” she said.

  I leaned down and kissed the corner of her mouth. She touched my face. “You’re looking smashing, Kat,” I said. No lie. She was wearing white jeans, which stretched taut against her hip and thigh. Her lime green velour pullover picked the color from her eyes.

  I looked at Marc. “I’m very sorry.”

  “It’s terrible. It makes no sense.”

  “They didn’t arrest you, I deduce.”

  He nodded. “Clever you.”

  I shook hands with him and then sat in a vacant rocking chair. “Tell me what happened,” I said to Marc.

  “Somebody killed Maggie. I found her dead in the boat. I called the cops. They came and took me to the station. They ignored me for a while. Then one of them took me into a room. I asked if I could call my father. Figured they wanted to arrest me or something. After I made the call, the cop asked me a few questions. I answered them. When I was done he said I could go. Kat was waiting for me. Took me back to pick up the truck. Came back here.” He shrugged.

  “That’s it?”

  “That’s it. For now. I figure maybe tomorrow they’ll get their act together. I’ve done time, makes me a killer, right?”

  “We’re having tea,” said Kat. “Want some?”

  I waved my hand. “Don’t get up.”

  She shrugged. “Okay.”

  “Get Brady some tea, Kat,” said Des. “He drove all the way up here in the middle of the night. The least we can do is give him some tea.”

  “I was going to,” she said brightly. She unfurled herself from her chair and left the room.

  “Did they treat you all right?” I said to Marc.

  He nodded. “Can’t say they gave me a lot of sympathy. I mean, you find your wife murdered…” He stared down at the carpet for a moment. “I talked to a cop named Fourier. He’s one of the detectives. I talked voluntarily. He listened and made some notes. When I was done he told me my sister was waiting. She took me back to my truck, and we came here. We’ve been sitting here sipping Constant Comment and avoiding the subject.”

  “Did you kill Maggie?” I said.

  “No.”

  Kat came back in. She handed me a mug. I took it and sipped. “It’s tea,” I said.

  “What did you expect?”

  “I figured tea was a euphemism.”

  “You want a drink?”

  “This tastes good, actually.” I turned to Marc. “Why don’t you tell me what happened, and what you told the police.”

  Des cleared his throat and stood up. Barney flopped onto his feet and looked up at Des. “I think we should leave you two. I’m going back to bed.” He looked down at Marc. “Son, I’m sorry. It’s an awful thing.”

  Marc shook his head. “Please don’t think…”

  Des touched his shoulder. “I don’t.”

  “Brady…”

  “Try to get some sleep, Des.”

  Kat went to him and they exchanged hugs and kisses. Then Des left the room. Barney scuttled along behind him.

  “That,” said Kat, “was a hint for me.” She was standing beside my chair. She ran her fingers absentmindedly through my hair. “Good night, Brady. Nice to see you.”

  “I parked behind you.”

  “I’m staying here for the night. Wouldn’t want to miss the excitement.”

  “She wants to take care of our father,” said Marc to me.

  Kat snapped a glance at Marc. It contained meaning I couldn’t read. Then she bent and kissed my forehead. “G’night.”

  “Night,” I said.

  I waited until she was out of the room. Then I turned to Marc. “You’re not getting a lot of sympathy from Kat.”

  He shrugged. “Never have. Ever since our mother left.”

  I nodded. “So. What happened? And what did you tell the cops?”

  “I told the police what happened. The same thing.”

  “Tell me what you left out, too.”

  “Are you grilling me?”

  “They’re going to talk to you some more. You’re right. They know you spent half a year in Shirley. When wives get murdered, ninety percent of the time it’s the husbands who do it. You discovered the body. I bet someone sometime overheard the two of you arguing. You’ll be a suspect tomorrow. Actually, you’re undoubtedly a suspect tonight. I want to know whether to call Zerk Garrett. If they end up arresting you, you’ll need him. Otherwise I can take care of your rights.”

  “Okay,” he said. He shifted in his chair. He was wearing gray dress slacks, a blue and white checked sport shirt, with a blue blazer. He had on black loafers with tassels, the kind of shoes I wouldn’t be caught dead in. He crossed his right ankle over his left knee and plucked at the crease in his trousers. “I couldn’t get to sleep. There was some thunder rumbling off in the distance. I thought of Constance. I had her out yesterday. Couldn’t remember snugging the bowlines. Figured I probably did, but I got it into my mind that I didn’t. Know how it is? You maybe can’t remember unplugging the coffee pot, and even though you know you always unplug the coffeepot, once you get it into your head that maybe you didn’t, you know you won’t rest easy until you go back and check. I was halfway to Springfield once and that happened to me. Had to turn around. Anyway, hearing the thunder, knowing the tide was coming in and all, I couldn’t get to sleep thinking about the boat smashing against the other boats. So I lay there for a while, and the longer I lay there the more I was positive I hadn’t secured her. The only way I was going to get any sleep was I had to go check on her. So I did.”

  “Where was Maggie while you were lying there worrying about the boat?”

  He looked away from me. “Out. She was out.”

  “Out?”

  He nodded. “Out.”

  “I bet the police asked you where Maggie was.”

  “Sure. I told Fourier she was out. That we didn’t keep track of each other. She had her life, I had mine. Parts of them intersected, parts didn’t. It worked well for us. We did some things together. Some things apart. Maggie had her friends. They weren’t necessarily my friends. So, yeah, she was out. Said she was going to have dinner with some friends, probably be out late. That was no problem. Except one of her friends killed her, I guess.”

  “And you don’t know who these so-called friends were?”

  “No, not really. Maybe people from where she used to work.”

  “Where’s that?”

  “The Night Owl. Up there on Route 1.”

  “The strip joint.”

  He shrugged. “It’s what she used to do. Strip. You know that.”

  “That’s how you met her, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “So you think she was out with someone from the Night Owl.”

  “I don’t know. Maybe. That was her crowd.”

  “Okay. Go on with your story.”

  “You want a beer?”

  “I’d love a beer.”

  Marc got up and went into the kitchen. I followed him. He opened the door of the refrigerator. “Coors or Bud?”

  “Bud.”

  He handed a bottle to me. I twisted off the cap. We sat at the kitchen table. He had a Coors. I lit a Winston and slugged from the bottle.

  “I took the truck down to the marina. You remember, it’s only about five minutes from here. I went out onto the docks. They’re humping up and down. Strong tide coming in. Lightning flickering out over the ri
ver. Sharp, damp breeze like there’s a storm coming in. Found the bowlines secure, naturally. But I noticed the hatch was open and the little light below was on. Not like me, to leave the hatch open. If the rain came, everything’d get soaked down there. So I hopped aboard and went below to turn off the light, see if anything’d been stolen. And Maggie was there.”

  He paused, sipped from his can of Coors, and stared at me over the rim.

  “Dead,” I said helpfully.

  “Oh, man,” he said softly. “I guess she was. I didn’t try to find her pulse or anything.”

  He stopped. I got up and rummaged through the cupboards for an ashtray. I gave it up and flicked my ash into the sink. I stood there leaning back against it holding my bottle of Budweiser in one hand and my Winston in the other. Marc drew circles in the condensation on the side of his beer can.

  “How did she die?” I said.

  He turned his head to look at me. “It was messy. Jesus. Her—her head. It was smashed in. A big dent in her forehead. Eyes wide open and all bulgy. Blood all over the place. God!”

  I turned on the faucet and doused my cigarette. I went back to the table.

  “Where was she? On the floor?”

  He cleared his throat. “She was sort of sprawled half in and half out of one of the berths. She was naked. Just a blanket sort of half over her. Looked like she had been sleeping and somebody came in and she sat up so the blanket fell off her. Then they smashed her on the head.”

  “Then what did you do?”

  “I went to the pay phone. There’s one there by the shop there at the marina. I called the cops and waited until they came. Which they did in about two minutes. I took them to the boat. They wouldn’t let me go aboard. They looked around. I stood on the dock with a cop whose job was to make sure I didn’t jump into the river or something. Then more cruisers came. And an ambulance and a couple unmarked cop cars. Then they put me into a cruiser and took me to the police station. Fourier came along a couple minutes later. He’s a guy I’ve known for a long time. Typical cop. The cops in this town, they look at me funny. Out of the corners of their eyes. Just reminding me they know I did time. Anyhow, Fourier took me into an interrogation room. I reminded him I had the right to make a phone call. He told me I was being premature, that they weren’t arresting me or anything, but it was perfectly okay with him if I made a call anyway. So I called my father. He said he was going to call you. I told him fine. Then I talked with Fourier.”