Bartholomew 02 - How to Marry a Ghost (25 page)

“Having got that far, I took a risk and sneaked round the back of our house to a gate that led into our garden. It was locked but I had a key. I actually had quite a nice time. It was the summer, it was a warm night, the moon was shining bright, la-di-da-di-da, and I stretched out on one of the sun loungers and had a snooze.

Actually it was more than that, I was out for two or three hours and the girls round the front had no idea I was even there.There

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were lights on upstairs and I could have woken Angie but if you really want to know I was quite enjoying the adventure of camp-ing in the garden.

“The only problem was when it got a bit nippy and I did want to go inside, Angie wouldn’t answer the bleeding back door. She more or less used to barricade herself inside the house when I was doing a concert in London. I mean, I don’t blame her. It was four in the morning and she probably thought it was one of the fans.

“So I had to walk back to the apartment. I got a bit lost and I asked a policeman walking his beat where I was. I thought I could rely on him not to mob me and as it turned out I wound up rely-ing on him for much more than that.

“The girl was still there when I got back. I had assumed she would leave when she found I was gone but she had got into my bed and was fast asleep. And it wasn’t as if I could sleep on a couch or something. This was just a place for me to crash after concerts so the place was totally bare of furniture except for the bed. By this time I was too tired and exhausted to do more than climb in beside her and go to sleep myself. It was probably the most idiotic thing I’ve ever done in my life but at the time I just thought it was the easiest.We’d both get a few hours’ kip and by the morning I’d have the energy to deal with her. I think I even envisaged having some kind of wise-uncle chat with her in the morning about the error of her ways.

“When I woke up in the morning and tried to rouse her, I discovered she was dead. And if you’ve done your homework and read all the press clippings, you’ll know what happened next.The police were all over me and the only reason I’m not doing twenty-five to life is because of that copper I spoke to. He’d recognized me, of course, and when they did a postmortem they put the time of death as being while I was gone. The neighbor who

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had run into me on the way out couldn’t wait to tell anyone who’d listen that he’d seen me go out and the copper confirmed where I was three hours later. And while I had no one who could say I was in my own garden for most of the night, they had no one who could say I wasn’t.”

I remembered the headlines now. pillow talk was the one they used the most.The girl had died of suffocation. Someone put a pillow over her head and held it there and they had found that there was one pillow missing from Shotgun’s bed.

Suddenly I realized something. I hadn’t got a single word of this on tape. I started typing furiously, trying to remember word for word what he had said. I’d done it in the past when I’d been doing an interview and the tape recorder had gone on the blink and left me with nothing. If I allowed nothing to distract me, I had probably unconsciously retained enough to recapture the gist of what he had said. And then I’d get him to sign it—or read it into the tape recorder.

It didn’t take me that long—it was only about four pages—

but when I turned to hand it to him, of course he had gone. I was frustrated beyond belief. We always got so far and then he opted out. I needed to take it further, to ask him for more detail. Had he been the only suspect?

But when I went looking for him, racing around the landing to where I’d seen him disappear before, I was stopped dead in my tracks by the wailing sound of a harmonica. Then it stopped and once again I marveled at Shotgun’s authentic rendering of the blues.

“Got plenty muddy water, don’t need no water t’all
All I need’s a sweet mama, to hear her daddy call.”

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But I left before I could hear the sound of him breaking down into heartrending sobs. Once was quite enough. God knows how he would cope when he had to talk about Sean’s death for the book.

This time I had a little trophy to take away with me. My right hand thrust into my pocket was clutching a disk onto which I had copied the transcriptions. Now I could get to work on the beginning of the book in the cabin. In the Jeep I laid it on the passenger seat beside me and then snatched it up into my pocket again as I looked through the windshield and saw a car parked at the end of the dirt road and leaning against it was Detective Morrison.

Had he come to pursue his persecution of Shotgun? Ought I to rush back and warn him? I drove past him, ignoring his wave to me over the steering wheel. As I approached the flat terrain surrounding Cranberry Hole Road that I now found so threatening, I wondered if I should have reported my nighttime prowler to him. But then I remembered what he had been doing to Franny and I knew that he was the last person to whom I would feel comfortable entrusting my safety.

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MIDWAY THROUGH THE MORNING OF YET ANOTHER

glorious day, I realized with a certain amount of satisfaction that even though I had been at the cabin for less than a week I had already created a nest just like the one I had in London. I could come in, close the door, and dismiss the world outside. No one bothered me apart from a few squawking seagulls, but if I felt like company, I could pop over to the Old Stone Market and visit with Franny or pick up the phone and speak to Rufus.

And there was another reason why I was suddenly so content in my surroundings, one that I had a little trouble coming to terms with. I was on my own again. To be translated: Tommy wasn’t around. It was a bit of a shock but I had to admit that while I thought about him quite a bit, I didn’t actually
miss
him as much as I had thought I would.

Of course there was the trivial little detail that two grisly murders had been committed less than half a mile away and I had my very own personal nighttime prowler but you can’t have everything. And in the meantime I had a job to do.

I spent the day setting up my “office” in the desk area of the cabin and making notes on how to structure Shotgun’s story. I drove to East Hampton and bought the reference books without which I could not work—a dictionary, a thesaurus, maps—at

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BookHampton and I called Staples and ordered a printer, a supply of typing paper, and all the other stationery I needed. I was, as they say, all set.

I had planned to spend the evening preparing a leisurely supper of clams (provided by Rufus) and a tomato salad made with local tomatoes from the farmers market and fresh basil, and then I was going to tackle Tommy’s letter.

So when Martha appeared in the doorway brandishing a bottle of wine, I wasn’t happy.

“I’m not disturbing you, am I?” Whenever people said that, you could bet on it that they knew perfectly well that they were.

“It was so good to talk to you the other day, I kind of hoped I’d find you here. And of course I wondered if you’d had a chance to—”

The look on her face was eager and pathetic and it infuriated me but I reminded myself that Martha had known Sean Marriott and I needed to keep her sweet.The one thing that could encourage me to be social was if it had something to do with my work.

Yet why did she have to come and ruin my evening?

“I was just about to give the place a good clean,” I said in an attempt to steer her away. A total lie. I was hopeless at cleaning.

Vacuum cleaners always saw me coming. I swear the minute I switched one on, it turned its suction off and began to shoot dust balls
out
all over the place.

“Oh, it’s too beautiful an evening for housework,” she said.

“Why don’t we take a few chairs outside and have a drink there?

Then we won’t have to look at whatever mess you were going to clear up.

“That’s the problem with living in a small space,” she went on,

“you really have to keep on top of the clutter. I tell you, living in those trailers sure keeps me on my toes.”

As I remembered, the inside of the trailers was immaculate.

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Maybe she had her “girls” trained to pop out of their plastic covers and run around with a duster every day.

“No,” she said, “domesticity’s not my bag at all.That’s why I’m working on Louis. Have you been to his home?”

I shook my head. “I don’t really know Louis,” I said, wondering what “working” on him entailed.

“Well, he’s got money—a housekeeper
and
a maid, you know?

The whole bit. If I married him, I wouldn’t have to lift a finger.”

“You and Louis are getting married? I had no idea.”

“I said
if
I married him. He hasn’t exactly asked me yet.You know I’ve always envied my women friends who were married to rich men.” Martha seemed to be in a confiding mood. “I don’t really need to live a fancy lifestyle but I do like to be pampered now and then.You have no idea how much I yearn to be whisked away for a romantic weekend, wined and dined. I want someone to buy me jewelry, clothes, to put me on their health care plan, and set me up with a nice little bank account.”

“Don’t we all?” I said. “Doesn’t Louis do all that for you?

Sounds like he can afford it.”

“No,” she said sharply. “Oh, he buys me a hamburger every now and then wherever there’s a movie ticket included in the price of a meal. And he talks about taking me away somewhere but somehow he never seems to get around to it. Have you ever been married?”

“No,” I said and left it at that. I didn’t want to get into a discussion about Tommy with her.

“I’ve come close more times than I care to admit,” she said,

“but somehow it never happens and I just don’t understand why.

Here I am in my fifties, still hoping that one day I’ll go out with a guy and it will automatically lead to the altar. I mean, it’s not like I’m unattractive.”

As we carried the chairs outside I studied Martha out of the

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corner of my eye. She was certainly good-looking. I wondered if maybe she was the kind of woman who heard wedding bells the minute she started having an affair with someone and never realized they were only viewing it as a fling.

“So how’s it going with Shotgun Marriott?” she asked when we were settled. Mercifully she had not mentioned her manuscript again.

“Fine,” I said. “What about Bettina Pleshette? The woman who was murdered—she was originally going to work with Shotgun.

Did you know her?”

“Never met her,” she said.

“And Shotgun?” I said, deciding to turn the tables on her and see where it got me. “Did Sean ever take you up to Mallaby and introduce you?”

“No, he didn’t,” said Martha and I could tell she had been disappointed. “He said his dad didn’t really like him taking people up to the house, that he’d become a real recluse. Shame,” she added reflectively. “I mean he would have been the perfect catch.

All that money from his rock ’n’ roll days, there must be some of it left.”

Something told me that she wasn’t quite as mercenary as she made out. Of course her age and circumstances had probably made her paranoid about how she was going to support herself for the rest of her life but there was something about Martha Farrell that made me think that wasn’t the whole story. At a guess, I’d have said what she was really desperate for was warmth and affection from a red-blooded male.

“Maybe you could introduce me?” she said casually and then warmed to her idea. “Now
there’s
a thought. How could we do it, do you think?”

“We couldn’t, I’m afraid,” I said firmly. “Sean was right. Shot-

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gun Marriott keeps himself to himself. Besides I thought you were
working
on Louis Nichols.” I smiled.

“Yeah, but at my age I can’t really afford to put all my eggs in one basket.” She laughed again. A softer sound than her previous cackling. Maybe that had been a nervous tic and she was beginning to relax with me. “And I haven’t really noticed him
working
on me in return.”

“Besides,” I said, without thinking, “I think Shotgun’s still in love with his wife.”

Now why had I said that? I didn’t have anything to go on other than the way he had spoken about his early years with Angie.

“Really?”
Martha sounded very interested. “Are they getting back together?”

“Did Sean talk about his mother?” I asked, ignoring her question.

“All the time,” said Martha.

I turned to her, surprised. “He did?”

“Well, of course he did. He was getting ready to get out of here and go and be with her in London. At least that’s what he told me. And he was excited about her coming here.”

“Angela Marriott was due here?”

“Sean was thrilled because he believed she was going to come and confront Shotgun about Sean’s living with her in England.

Sean was proud of his mother, that she had the guts to come and discuss it with his father face-to-face. He’d always thought his mother didn’t care about him and the fact that she suddenly wanted to reestablish her relationship with him made him so happy. So it was just tragic that he died before he got to see her.

Just tragic,” she repeated and for a moment I thought she was going to break down.

“Anyway,” she said, recovering, “I’m not so sure I want to meet Shotgun. Not if Sean was so anxious to get away from him.”

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“Is that what he said—that he wanted to get away from Shotgun?”

“Well, what’s Shotgun’s side of it? What’s he going to put in this book of his?”