Bartholomew 02 - How to Marry a Ghost (27 page)

Hope McIntyre

get together for dinner tonight?’ That sort of thing. No sign of Sean ever replying. Pretty sad if that was the extent of their communication. But there were plenty of e-mails from his mother referring to the fact that Shotgun Marriott murdered someone in London fourteen years ago.”

“They never proved that,” I said quickly. “What about Shotgun’s computer? What’s on that?”

He looked at me for a second, probably trying to gauge if I already knew the answer to the question I had just asked and was only trying to find out what he knew. The truth was I was so utterly computer-hopeless most of the time that it had never occurred to me to look beyond the documents I had set up for the transcriptions.

“There’s nothing on Shotgun’s computer apart from his e-mails to his son and a couple to the guy he was working with in Connecticut,” said Evan Morrison. “He didn’t seem to use his computer for anything except making arrangements with people.”

“What about Sean’s boyfriend?”

“We’ve talked to him and we’ve established that he stayed in New York the night Sean was killed so he’s in the clear. He said Sean was becoming obsessed with the fact that his father had killed this girl. I’m saying that Shotgun Marriott is a killer and while I don’t really like him for his own son’s murder, I’m not ruling it out because I think the intended victim was Bettina Pleshette and Sean Marriott was killed by accident. When he didn’t get Bettina the first time, Shotgun lured her to his home the next night to kill her. He didn’t want her digging into his past.”

I listened to him and I hated what he was saying, hated it because there was a trickle of doubt that was beginning to worm its way into my head. Earlier in the day I had told Martha Farrell that Shotgun still loved his wife. And from the brief contact I had had

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with Angie Marriott, I could believe that she still loved him. And this might well be the reason she had never turned him in for the killing of the groupie. But would she leave her son with a murderer?

I was shocked that I was even allowing myself to process these thoughts. I was supposed to be trying to help Shotgun.

“But Detective Morrison, you’re forgetting one thing.” I turned to him.

“What’s that?”

“Whatever might have happened years ago in London, Shotgun Marriott has a cast-iron alibi for the nights that his son and Bettina were killed. Dumpster has sworn on oath that he was at Mallaby both nights and Shotgun was there.” Even as I said it, I recalled Shotgun himself saying Dumpster was lying about the night of Bettina’s death.

“Dumpster?” Evan Morrison looked confused.

“Dumpster Cook. Franny Cook’s son. He works for Shotgun.”

“Oh, you mean Martin Cook?”

Did I? I had never thought to ask Dumpster’s real name. And suddenly it all made sense.
M saw something
. “M” for Martin.

Dumpster was at Mallaby at least the night Sean was killed and who knew? Maybe he had been out in the woods when Bettina died.

As if he were reading my mind, Evan Morrison said: “Whatever he wants to call himself, Martin Cook’s in trouble. He swore under oath at Shotgun Marriott’s arraignment that he was with Shotgun both nights. Well, okay, he may have been over at Mallaby but I know for a fact that he went out to hunt deer the night Bettina Pleshette was killed. Quite apart from the fact that he shouldn’t have been hunting at all, he hasn’t been able to show me his bow and arrow since that night. Says it went missing.

Looks to me like either he perjured himself at the arraignment or

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he did something with that bow and arrow that he’s not telling anyone about.”

I didn’t like the sound of this one bit. And it got worse.

“So my guess is he was Shotgun Marriott’s accomplice. That’s why he’s covering up for him. But I’m working on him. He’s the one who’ll help me nail Shotgun, I’m counting on it, and then I’ll be back with another warrant for his arrest.”

I had heard from Rufus that Detective Morrison had conducted extensive interviews with a mass of people in the area but he seemed determined to pin the murders on Shotgun no matter what. But if anyone was in immediate serious trouble it was Dumpster. And suddenly I realized I might know something Evan Morrison didn’t: that Bettina had had an assignation with M at Mallaby beach at nine the night she was killed. But if M turned out to be Dumpster, I was going to keep this knowledge to myself until I had spoken to Dumpster.

“So where’s his mother?” Evan Morrison leaned in close again.

“I hear you two were getting pretty friendly so maybe you can tell me where she’s at. She’s not at her store and no one seems to know where she’s gone.”

I shook my head. “Can’t help you.”

“Can’t help me or won’t help me? Remember what I said about obstruction.”

I just looked at him.

“Maxed out on helping me, huh? Just how much do you know about Franny Cook? Scott Abernathy told me quite a few interesting things about her. That’s his kid, that baby, did you know?

Bettina Pleshette set him straight. She had info on Franny from the city.Wasn’t pretty. So now will you tell me where she is?”

“I can’t tell you,” I said. I was telling the truth. I couldn’t tell him not because I didn’t know where Franny was but because I

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couldn’t betray her.
And what was the “info” Bettina had on her?
I wondered.

“So you’re going to be difficult. Fine, now let me see your passport,” he said. He had me by the arm and on my feet. It was more of a suggestion than a forceful move, nothing I could complain about, but I felt distinctly threatened.

“My passport?” I moved away from him. I couldn’t see the connection.

“Just let me take a look. Formal ID. I’m not going to take it from you. You can hold on to it and turn the pages for me if you’re scared I’ll run off with it.

“See this?” he said when I’d handed it to him and he had flipped over a few pages. “See this white card? This is your I-94.

They’ve given you only a month to be in the country.You’d better be out of here in two weeks otherwise you’ve overstayed Uncle Sam’s welcome.”

And you can count on me to let them know if you’re still here
was what the look on his face told me.

I was pretty shaken by just about everything he’d said and I had a strong feeling that was his real motive for paying me a visit: to rattle me. But it was his parting shot that unnerved me the most.

“By the way,” he said as he set off across the dunes to his car,

“I know it was Shotgun Marriott. I’ve got it from the horse’s mouth.”

“Who’s that?”

“His wife. She was one of the first people I spoke to right after the funeral. She told me about what happened in London long before I read her e-mails to her son. And while she didn’t have any concrete proof, she as good as pointed the finger at him for Bettina Pleshette’s murder.”

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So that was how the land lay. Angela Marriott was gunning for her husband.

I waited a good twenty minutes after I’d seen Evan Morrison drive away down Cranberry Hole Road. Then I raced out of the cabin and along the beach. Franny’s car was outside the Stucco House and I burst into the hallway without bothering to ring the bell.

“Franny?
FRANNY!
” I yelled. “Franny, I need you.”

She appeared above me at the top of the stairs.

“Where can I find Dumpster? Is he here? I need to speak to him right away.”

Franny gave me an odd look. “Why are you looking for him?”

“I’ll tell you later. Just tell me where he is, I really need to get hold of him.”

“Well, that’s just it,” said Franny, coming down the stairs. “I don’t know. He’s taken off somewhere. A bag and most of his clothes are gone from the apartment above the store and he left me a note saying he was leaving and he’d be in touch. He left early this morning before I got to the store and I’ve called everyone I can think of but no one’s heard from him. So it’s weird that suddenly you rush in here desperate to find him because basically”—she sat down in a heap on the bottom step and put her head in her hands—“Dumpster’s gone, Lee. He’s totally disappeared.”

C

12

H A P T E R

P

T HE PHILLIONAIRE WAS KILLED INSTANTLY WHEN HIS

car came off the Long Island Expressway and careered across the hard shoulder to hit a tree at seventy miles an hour.

The irony was that despite Phil’s own history of heart disease, it was his driver who had the heart attack at the wheel just past the sign to Shirley and Wading River at exit sixty-eight, even though he had passed his recent physical with flying colors. Even worse was the fact that the Phillionaire’s Sikorsky helicopter had been standing by at the Chelsea helipad in Manhattan ready to take him out to East Hampton. But he had apparently had an early morning meeting on Long Island and it was surmised that because it was such a beautiful day, he must have acted on impulse and told his driver to just keep going out to the Hamptons.

Rufus broke the news to me in person, which was thoughtful of him. My knees turned to jelly with the shock and I sat down with a bump and began to bawl my head off. He exercised such extreme gentleness in comforting me that it was a good thirty seconds before two things struck me. First, it was
his
father who was dead and I should be comforting
him
. And second, much too late, I asked:

“My mother?”

“She wasn’t with him. She’s in New York and I’ve come to take you to her. I’m driving in now.”

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“Was it—?”

“They told me it was instantaneous and that he wouldn’t have felt a thing and right now I’m going to believe them because I have to keep it together,” said Rufus. “But I know I’m going to wake up at three in the morning and start imagining what happened to him in all its gruesome detail.”

He left me to pack a bag and I forced myself to calm down.

Rufus was absolutely right when he spoke about keeping it together and I had to think how much my mother was going to need me.

I was in the process of closing all the windows and throwing out the milk when Martha Farrell appeared in the doorway.

“Knock, knock,” she called.

I stared at her in horror. It had come true. What Rufus had told me about how people believed that if she turned up at a wedding, it wouldn’t last. My mother’s relationship with the Phillionaire was over because he was dead. By turning up at their commitment ceremony, Martha had jinxed it for them.

“What’s the matter?” she said. “You look terrible.”

Sometimes a crisis can turn a relative stranger into an instant best friend and even in my distress I was aware that as Martha put her arm around me and began to console me in a soft and urgent voice, a bond was being established between us. She knew exactly what to say. “Just remember,” she hugged me to her, “I’m here for you. Call me anytime. Sometimes the wind coming in off the beach makes it hard to hear anything when I’m in the trailer but try me anyway.You’re in for a rough time and I know what that’s like. I lost my father when I was twelve and I still don’t think I’m over it. I don’t subscribe to this
time heals everything
crap. You cared about this man—I can tell by the way you talk about him—

and you’re going to suffer. I only wish you weren’t. But every-

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one’s going to be focusing on his sons and your mother so just know that I’ll be here for
you
.”

It was exactly what I needed to hear. I had to face up to the enormity of it all and deal with it and it helped to know that someone understood how I was feeling.

Rufus told me to look the other way as his truck passed the wreckage of his father’s car on the LIE. Apart from this brief exchange, we made the trip into New York in almost total silence and for this I was grateful. I think we both needed the space to come to terms with what had happened. Franny had come over to the cabin when Rufus had picked me up and I had been struck by the tenderness between them. She had held his face between her palms and bent down to kiss his brow and for a second he had buried his head in her breast. I had seen him heaving with muffled sobs and I had heard Franny’s almost inaudible parting words:
I love you
. And I was pleased that Rufus had managed to establish this closeness to her so that he had someone to lean on.

Because it became abundantly clear as soon as we arrived at the Fifth Avenue apartment that he couldn’t count on the remaining member of his own family for support.

“Mr. Scott’s upstairs,” said the doorman.

“He is?” I could tell Rufus was surprised. “I must have spoken to him half a dozen times on the phone today. He never said he was in New York. I just assumed I was speaking to him in Southampton.”

Rufus escorted me into the elevator and when we stepped directly into the apartment, Scott emerged from the library, a large Scotch in his hand. He presented an extraordinary sight because he still had on the bottom half of his green scrubs with a sweatshirt on top. He’d clearly been called out of the OR and I wondered whether his patient was still lying there waiting for him.

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“She’s in Dad’s bedroom,” he said shortly. No other greeting, and not
their
bedroom, I noticed.

I found my mother on her knees on the floor of the Phillionaire’s dressing room. The doors to the hanging closets all around the room were open and row upon row of his immaculate tailored suits were hanging before her. Before she registered my presence I found it heart-wrenching to see her reach up and stroke the sleeves of the jackets, murmuring to them as if the Phillionaire was still inside them. She was as groomed as ever in black pants and a black silk shirt and not a hair out of place but when she turned her head I was shocked to see that tears had wrought havoc with her makeup.