Bartholomew 02 - How to Marry a Ghost (29 page)

and that he would use the information to help him gain custody of Eliza in some way?

“What about Eliza?” I asked Louis Nichols. “What will happen to her?”

“As I said, it’s messy. It all depends what provision Phil has made for her in his will, as his only grandchild. If it’s substantial in any way, then you can bet your life Scott will want to play a bigger role in her life.”

That was it, I thought. Scott had to be aware that his father had known about Eliza. Maybe he’d known for some time and that was why he was suddenly taking more interest in Eliza.

“By the way, I’ve become friends with Martha Farrell,” I said, to see what sort of reaction that would get. “I’m reading the manuscript of her novel for her.”

“Really?” Louis Nichols sounded surprised. “Who’d have thought Miss Havisham would have it in her. A woman of many talents.”

I didn’t quite like the patronizing way he said it.

“You knew her when she was an actress?”

“Well, I’ve known her since she first came to live out here. I wasn’t aware she was ever an actress although I suppose it’s possible. Tell you the truth, none of us knew where she came from when she arrived out here. She kept pretty much to herself in the beginning and we all let her have it that way. That’s one of the things you can count on, being left alone to do what you want.

It’s the reason some people come here in the first place—it’s the end of the road in more ways than one.You get people who ride the Long Island Railroad all the way out to Montauk, check into a motel room, and
boom!
It’s all over. And no one ever hears the shot.”

Surely that wasn’t what he was saying about Martha?

“No,” he went on, “I never knew Martha was an actress.When

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she first came out here, all she ever did was fish. She set herself up in those damned trailers and she was out in her boat on the bay at first light along with everyone else. We thought we had a born-again Bonacker—that’s what we call the locals, people who live around the Accabonac Harbor—but then she got involved in all that wedding dress crap.”

“You see quite a lot of her now, don’t you?” I wanted him to know that I knew about him and Martha.

“Oh Lord, what’s she been saying?” He smiled in what was intended to be a charming, throwaway manner. But his next words made my blood run cold. “Sure, I see Martha from time to time but I have no intention of getting any more involved with her than I am now. I mean”—he shrugged again, an irritating habit he had that indicated he didn’t want to take anything too seriously—

“it’s Martha. Come
on
!”

I was still finding all my spare thoughts directed toward memories of the Phillionaire and I think I would have forgotten Louis Nichols’s chilling dismissal of Martha sooner rather than later had she not been standing on the shoulder when the bus drew to a halt in Amagansett. I knew immediately that she had come to meet him, to surprise him, but when she saw me get off the bus ahead of him, she rushed to embrace me and he used this to slip off toward his car parked farther up the road.

“Louis!” she called. “Here I am.”

“Oh hi,” he called back, “how are you? I would have given Lee a ride but it’s great you’ve come to meet her.”

He knew exactly why she was there and it killed me to see the look on her face.

Just as it killed me to see how valiantly my mother was trying to keep it all together when Rufus deposited her at the Stucco House that evening. I was touched by the way Rufus included her

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in all the decisions that were made over the next few days for the simple service that was to take place on the beach at the end of the week. But when the time came, for all that we’d spent the week discussing how it would be, I wasn’t prepared for the devastating sight of the Phillionaire’s coffin being held aloft above the high beach grass as it was carried down to the beach.

We were to gather at the very same spot where the commitment ceremony had taken place, only this time the weather was the kind you prayed for if you were having a wedding. I was in the process of trying to steam the creases out of a black linen shift in the shower—the Phillionaire hadn’t deemed it necessary to keep an iron at the cabin—when a shadow fell across the open doorway. I looked up and screamed.

But in surprise not fear.

Dumpster stood there, his lanky frame towering above me as he stepped into the room and looked around. “You’re alone, right? I need to speak with you.”

C

13

H A P T E R

P

MY MOM TOLD ME YOU WERE LIVING HERE,” HE

said, eyeing me warily. “You guys hang together, right?

You’ve become friends?”

I nodded again, yes. I was horrified to see what a terrible state he was in, a far cry from the outgoing, rosy-cheeked youth I had encountered at Shotgun’s. His hair was matted and gave new meaning to the term “dirty blond.” His clothes were filthy and I knew that if he came any closer I’d get a nasty whiff of his unwashed state. He looked disheveled and hollow-eyed from lack of sleep.

“I have to see her,” he said, “my mom. I know she’s living over there”—he jerked his head in the direction of the Stucco House—

“but there’s cars parked everywhere. I don’t want to run into anyone else. I saw just your Jeep here so I took a chance you were on your own.”

“You want to see Franny?”

He nodded. “Can you go get her? Bring her back here?”

“Dumpster, I don’t really have time. We’ve got a funeral service starting in twenty minutes down on the beach for Philip Abernathy and—”

“Yeah, I heard he died. I’m sorry. But you know”—he looked at me helplessly—“I really do have to see my mom.”

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“Where have you been?” I asked him. “She told me you just took off.”

“I had to get where
he
wouldn’t find me.”

“He?”

“Detective Morrison. He’s got me all tied up in knots so I can’t move. He wants me to retract what I said at Shotgun’s arraignment. To say that I wasn’t with Shotgun the night Bettina was killed. He’s going to make my life hell—and he’s going to make my mom’s life even worse—until I go along with what he wants.”

“Well, were you there or not?”

“Not really.”

“Dumpster!”

“Okay, okay. I was there, I was at Mallaby but I wasn’t at the house. I was out in the woods with my bow and arrow, I had plans to hunt deer.”

“So Shotgun doesn’t really have an alibi?”

“Not as far as I know. But he does have me. I’m not going to change my story again.Then I’d get done for lying at the arraignment. And I’d get my mom in trouble because she changed her story for me. But it was my bow and arrow they found, I know it. I left them in my truck at the end of the dirt road round about eight thirty that night, I had to go meet someone, and when I got back they were gone.”

“You went to meet Bettina at the beach?”

He looked astonished. “How in the world did you know that?”

“Listen,” I said to him, “I’ll go and get your mother but in return I want a guarantee that you’ll answer a few questions for me. Like how come Bettina Pleshette had an assignation with you the night she was killed? Maybe you’re saying you were with Shotgun not only to give him an alibi but to give yourself one as well. Maybe Shotgun’s
your
alibi instead of the other way around.”

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“I thought you were my mom’s friend,” he said, backing away from me. “That’s why I came to you. I thought I could trust you to bring her to me without anyone seeing me. But now you’re pointing the finger at me. Okay, that was my bow and arrow in the pit but I swear to God, I don’t know how they got there. I’m backing up Shotgun because I like the guy. I want to help him. It’s that simple. I haven’t done anything wrong.”

“Except lie all over the place. Dumpster,” I said gently, “I know what the deal is with Evan Morrison.Your mother told me all about it, how you have this arrangement with him and—”

He broke in. “That’s why I took off. That’s why I’m on the loose. I can’t handle that anymore. So far I’ve been making stuff up but I’m running out of stories to give him and I don’t want to have to rat on my friends. Plus the guy won’t leave me alone. He keeps putting the pressure on me to say I wasn’t with Shotgun.

It’s like he
knows
I’m lying. He wants to nail Shotgun so bad, it’s scary and I don’t want to be a part of that.”

“And you think running away is going to make it any better?”

“No!”
He was yelling at me now, totally distraught. I hated provoking him like this but I wanted to scare him into telling me the truth. “No,” he quieted down a little, “but I just can’t handle it anymore.”

“You know Evan Morrison thinks you might have been Shotgun’s accomplice?”

I stood back, ready for the outburst that I felt was sure to come, but he just looked sad.

“Well, then I don’t have a prayer, do I?” Now he looked totally helpless.

“But what was the meeting you had with Bettina all about?”

“The meeting I didn’t have with Bettina, you mean. She was killed before I saw her. I asked her to meet up with me down at the beach by Mallaby, told her I had some stuff to tell her.”

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“Which was?”
M saw something
.

“Oh, it was just a way of getting her to meet me.”

“Why did you want her down at the beach—alone—at nine o’clock at night?”

“I wasn’t going to kill her, if that’s what you’re thinking. Although I might have come close.”

“You didn’t like her?”

“I didn’t really know her but I hated what she was doing to my mom. She was always trying to talk to me because she knew I worked for Shotgun. But I knew he didn’t want to deal with her so I kept out of her way as much as I could. But there was one time when she cornered me as I was coming out of the Old Stone Market. She started asking me about the life Mom and I had led back in the city.”

So I’d been right about Bettina knowing about Franny’s past.

“She asked me who my father was,” he went on, “and when I didn’t answer, she started making these
insinuations
—like my mom had had way too many men in her life and maybe—I mean, she was making slurs on my mom’s character that I just did not care to hear. And I sort of knew I wasn’t the only one she was talking to.” He shook his head. “I got the feeling it was only a matter of time before she started telling my mom’s customers at the market about her life in the city. So I felt I had to do something to shut her up. I thought if I made her think I had some information about Shotgun, I could hold it over her until she promised to stop bad-mouthing my mom.”

“You gave her information about Shotgun?”

“That’s why I called her and told her to meet me at the beach.”

“What did you have to tell her?”

But he was eyeing me suspiciously. “What does it matter?” he said evasively. “I never saw her.”

He was standing right in front of me, blocking the door, his fin-

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gers drumming against his thigh, but I wasn’t remotely threatened by him. He was just a boy acting big, protective of his mother, protective of Shotgun, and utterly, utterly confused.

“Did you see anything out there in the woods, Dumpster?” I stepped forward and stared straight into his face.

“Oh
man
!”

What was that supposed to mean?

“Well, did you?”

“So what if I did see something the night Bettina died? Or the night Sean died for that matter. I’m not going to say a word.

Whatever I say it’s going to get me in trouble with someone.

Shotgun, Detective Morrison, Mom. That’s why I’m going to keep quiet. That’s why I need Mom to give me some money so I can get out of here. If I don’t tell anybody, they won’t know, and believe me, it’s better that way.”

“Dumpster, we’re talking about murder here.
Two
murders.

You have to tell what you saw. I’ll go and get your mother and leave you here together while I go to the funeral on the beach.

No one’s going to come near here while that’s taking place.Then I’ll come back and you and I will talk. And you’ll tell me everything and then we’ll find a way to make sure nothing will happen to you.”

Even as I spoke I wondered if I would be able to guarantee this. I had no idea what he was going to tell me.
If
he agreed to tell me anything.

“You’re scared, Dumpster,” I said, “and I can see why.The real problem here is that we don’t want to talk to the very person we ought to be helping, the person who’s supposed to be clearing everything up. I can understand why you need to get free from Evan Morrison’s power and I’m going to help you do that.”

Exactly how, I had absolutely no idea and I knew what I really

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ought to do was go straight to Evan Morrison and tell him what Dumpster had told me.

But I knew I would never rat on Dumpster. I couldn’t do that to Franny.

“But my mom?” he said. “I keep saying I’m not going to say what he wants me to say but then what’s he going to do to my mom?”

“I know. But she’s safe over there. Do you like Rufus?”

He shrugged. “I guess.”

“Well, he’ll take care of your mom.We’ll just have to let him in on the whole story so he knows it has to be extra special care from now on. He’s a pretty good guy and you can trust him. But are you quite sure getting away from here is the best thing?”

“Absolutely,” he said. “I need to clear my head.”

“And you don’t think you ought to tell your mother everything when she comes over?”

“I don’t want her involved. I said that already. She’s had enough going on, she needs a break.”

“Okay.” I nodded. He could get it all out of his system with me, whatever he had been carrying around that had got him in such a terrible state. This was one way I could help Franny. But what would I do with whatever he told me? Would I go to Detective Morrison? Because the only thing I could tell
him
and walk away unscathed was that Shotgun was the killer—and that was the last thing
I
wanted to hear.