A Charmed Place (48 page)

"Had been?"

Bailey's round face sagged. "You heard me right," he said glumly. "Woodbine was murdered last night. A little before you found this, in fact," he added, tapping the plastic sheet with his middle finger. "Maybe you can find some humor in the timing. I sure as hell can't."

Neither could Hawke; he turned and slammed his hand against the wall, spilling his coffee in his anger. "I don't believe it! Shit! I don't believe it!"

"Hey, hey, cool it! How do you think I feel? You don't have anything at stake here."

"Yeah, right," said Hawke, bitter in his irony. "How did it happen? Where?"

Bailey filled Hawke in with what he'd learned so far. "There was a brief struggle in the office—nothing long or violent, which is surprising because Woodbine looked to be pretty fit for his age—and there was some kind of penny-ante payoff involved. Or maybe another 'church' collection: they found an envelope stuffed with small bills."

In the same dejected voice, he said, "There are prints everywhere; they're running them against the staff's now. But there was no gun. The gun might have belonged to Woodbine. Apparently he owned one.
And his hand showed bruising, maybe from being slammed in the desk drawer.  Trying to get a gun out? 
They're searching the area for
one
now. And—this is all strictly off the record, you got that?—the shooter left his watch behind, unless Woodbine was
wearin' one on each wrist when he got popped."

The detective plunked his elbows on his desk, bent his head down, and ran his hands through what was left of his hair. "This is such a pisser," he mumbled. "We'll get this guy—whoever did it was a hack—but that doesn't help
my
case
any
. My only hope is that the bullets match up between the two victims. 'Course, even if they match, we have to allow that the gun could belong to the shooter. Or that he got his hands on Woodbine's gun a while ago and shot Timmons first with it. We'll probably never know."

"I don't suppose Woodbine left behind a full confession or anything," Hawke said dryly.

"No. But look on the bright side," Bailey said, dragging his hands over his face. He smiled grimly and said, "You yourself have a damn
ed
good alibi. Me."

Hawke said wryly, "I appreciate the vote of confidence. Okay. Well
... you need me for anything more?''

Still staring at the clipping, the detective shook his head in silence.

Sighing, Hawke g
ot up to leave. "Keep in touch.  I'll do the same.
"

"Yeah. Thanks anyway."

"Sure," Hawke said, giving the detective a tired thumbs- up.

He returned to his Jeep a different man than he'd left it. Much, maybe all, of his enthusiasm was gone. What was he going to tell Maddie? Gee, we think we had your dad's murderer, but he slipped through our fingers and got himself killed, so now we'll never know? That ought to impress the family, all right.

Bailey had ticked off the possible gun scenarios with depressing thoroughness. There were too damn many of them. The only way to prove that it was Woodbine who shot Edward Timmons was to come up with yet new evidence. They could feel reasonably sure—maybe very sure—that he was guilty. But would the family be satisfied with that? Would they see that a crude sort of justice had been done? Hawke couldn't say. All he knew was that
he
sure as hell wasn't happy.

He considered stopping for breakfast somewhere on the road, but the morning was getting on, and he was anxious to get back. For better or worse, Maddie had to be told. He was surprised at the depth of his reluctance to tell her. Something was sitting uneasily at the pit of his stomach. Whether it was too much coffee or a sense of foreboding was hard for him to say.

He kept coming back to Michael Regan. When all was said and done, Maddie's ex-husband was the obvious link between Woodbine and the Timmons family. He could be an innocent, deluded pawn of Woodbine's—or he could be more implicated than that.

The fact that Michael had made no secret of his involvement with Woodbine made it seem as if he had nothing to hide. On the other hand, he apparently had come into some money. Supposedly it was an inheritance. Maddie had infrequent contact with his family, so she hadn't been able to say for sure that it was; all she had was Tracey's version of her father's version of events. That was too many removes for Hawke's taste.

But an envelope of small bills not amounting to much—that didn't fit in with either a blackmail or a bribery scenario. If Michael's "inheritance" was a fat first payment
from Woodbine
,
then
what was the
piddly
church-sized one
of twenties all
about?

Where Michael was concerned, Hawke didn't trust his own instincts at all. He had too deep a grudge against the man for having married Maddie. Still
... he didn't like the gnawing feeling in the pit of his stomach.

He rolled down
Route
495 with relative ease, then became more and more frustrated as traffic slowed on 25. What was it with
Massachusetts
? Was there nowhere to go on a weekend but the
Cape
? He turned on the radio and searched for a news station, curious to know whether the murder had made it to the airwaves yet.

Ten mi
nutes later, he had his answer.

"The murder of Geoffrey Woodbine, director of the Brookline Institute of Research and Parapsychology and a prominent lecturer on the international circuit, was discovered late last night by firefighters responding to an alarm t
here," a newscaster intoned. "
Dr. Woodbine is believed to have been shot in his office at about nine o'clock last night. Police confirm that they are seeking a possible suspect for questioning."

A possible suspect.
The adrenaline that had drained so completely from Hawke came back like a raging river. He had to call Bailey, but where was a phone? He kept driving, sometimes forced to a crawl, looking for either an exit or a phone booth. Why the devil hadn't he
thought to recharge
his
cell phone
before
the electricity went out?
Because he was roofing a lighthouse, that's why.

Finally—an exit. He pulled off the highway and pulled in the first gas station he came to.

Bailey, fortunately, was at his desk and up to speed on developments. "Michael Regan," he answered without being asked the question.

Hawke wasn't at all surprised.

"The facility is apparently involved in government work," Bailey explained. "They have a security clearance, so everyone who works there is photographed and fingerprinted, including the subjects in their research. Identifying the prints was almost too easy. Like I said: the guy's a hack. The watch, which a lab assistant recognized, was just frosting on the cake."

"Have you picked him up yet?"

"They're doing it now. I can tell you this: he's planning to skip the country with Tracey this afternoon. He's charged two tickets to
Paris
in their names to his Visa. Worse case, they'll be apprehended at the gate. He's not going anywhere. Not with her, and not without her,'' the detective said grimly.

"You'll traumatize the girl," Hawke said, bothered by the scene that was playing out so vividly in his mind.

"Yeah, I'm aware. But there's not much we can do about it, and it
may not
come to that.
"

"If it does, I'll bring Maddie to
Logan
.
Maddie
should be there, so give me the flight information. If I don't hear from you by—damn! I don't have a phone. All right. I'll be at
Rosedale
, either inside or out of the house. If you don't pick him up at his condo, send someone from the
Sandy
Point
station to me at Rosedale, and I'll get Maddie up to
Logan
. Make sure you give me enough time."

"Okay. Wait there to hear from us. And pray this goes right."

Hawke wrote down the terminal, the gate, the flight, even the seat assignments. His thought was that the data would be something concrete for Maddie to cling to. It was going to be the toughest day of her life, tougher than anything else she'd known so far. And that was hard, even for him, to believe.

Minutes later, Hawke got snared in the traffic jam from hell. The traffic report blamed it on an accident in the rotary before the
Sagamore
Bridge
. He was trapped on Route 6 with no way out, and he wouldn't get off if he could. It was the only road to the
Cape
.

"Hi, come on in," Maddie yelled in answer to the knock on the front screen door. "I'm in the kitchen."

Joan walked in cradling an armful of daisies, zinnias, and snapdragons, and handed them to Maddie. "I know you miss your garden," she said. "There was a truck in town selling these. I couldn't resist, which is why I'm late. Of all the days to walk. Don't look for rhyme or reason in the color scheme," she added defiantly. "I just bought two of everything."

Grinning, Maddie said, "They're fabulous!"

"And, they don't need refrigeration."

Maddie handed Joan a green hobnail vase and said, "Here, dip this in the water barrel—halfway is enough—and arrange the flowers while I finish making breakfast. A hot brunch. I'm so excited. Praise the lord for Coleman stoves."

"You didn't have to go to all this trouble, Maddie. We could've just had Danish."

"It's no trouble, and besides, I really appreciate your agreeing to be here when my mother arrives this afternoon," Maddie said. She added wryly, "There's strength in numbers, you know."

"Uh-oh. I take it a little tension remains?"

"Actually, not too bad. Currently I resent her more than she resents me. I like playing the martyr; it frees me of guilt," Maddie quipped.

Joan pulled an Asian lily out of the bouquet and stuck it like a flagpole in the middle of the vase. "I'm glad to see you're handling this with such aplomb."

Maddie sighed and said, "You want the truth? I cry myself to sleep every night. I'm afraid of the dark—I feel so alone then—so I leave an oil lamp burning all night. If I had TV, I'd watch the shopping channel till dawn. In short, I have all the symptoms of someone who's grieving. And yet I don't dare let my mother see it. Or Tracey. Or George or even Claire. It's my only hope: that they see me having so much fun without them that they want to be around me again."

"Wow. Did you get that out of a book?"

Smiling sadly, Maddie answered, "Yeah. What was the title again? Oh, right:
The Book of Life
.
Have a seat, Joannie. I'll bring in our food."

Maddie went out into the yard where she'd set up the stove on her beloved HMS
Bliss
shop shingle—whose name seemed on the ironic side nowadays—and returned with the plate of blueberry pancakes that she had been keeping warm. Bacon, cantaloupe, strawberries, and hot coffee. "Things could be worse," she told Joan as she poured coffee from a thermal carafe. "Don't you feel almost normal right now?"

"Excuse me—normal?" said Joan, drowning her pancakes in syrup. "We're flushing our toilets with buckets of sea water and reading by candlelight. I'm showering under a black plastic bag that's hanging from a clothesline.
Normal
? I'm tired of washing my clothes in a bucket with a plunger. I'm thinking of
dumping
the summer and going back home."

"Joannie, no, you can't do that!" Maddie said, dismayed. "I really would miss you. You
have
to stay."

Joan seemed shyly pleased to be wanted. She smiled and said, "Oh, all right. But you have to promise me brunch now and then, pioneer woman."

"Deal."

"How about Tracey? Any chance that she'll be returning soon to paradise?"

"Not until paradise has running water," Maddie said, trying to deal lightly with the painful question. She added, "Sometimes I think she sounds homesick. But as soon as I
say anything at all about
Rosedale
, she changes the subject."

"Is she staying out of trouble, do you think?"

Maddie winced. "
I think so, but w
ho knows?
Even
after a good call, like the last one, I end up being furious at her for what she's putting Dan and me through."

"Which brings me to my next question," said Joan, biting a strawberry free of its stem.

"He hasn't left," Maddie said softly. "I have no right to expect him to stay, and yet
... I do. It's not so much that he has to be with me or die, as that he can't be with anyone else anymore. It's the same with me."

She laughed self-consciously and said, "I know that sounds weird, but I've thought about this so much: either we're going to live the rest of our lives together, or we're going to live them out alone. There's no in between for us; no making do with someone else ever again. Not after this."