Murder in Pastel (13 page)

But once in bed, comfortable and alone, my brain kicked into gear. I lay there running everything over in my mind. On the bureau, my father’s photographed grin reappeared Cheshire Cat style as the room grew lighter and lighter. I mused over Brett’s suggestion that Cosmo had never left Steeple Hill. Murder. That’s what Brett had been talking about. And now Brett was dead. Murdered.

It still didn’t seem real. I tried to feel something. There was nothing there beyond a dull shock. A sense that it had to be a mistake.

Why would anyone kill Brett? Maybe that was a rhetorical question. There were probably a number of people who might want Brett out of the way, but murder? Murder was such a drastic step to take. So risky. And so unnecessary, surely? Unless…Brett had been right, and Cosmo had not died a natural death. Suppose Brett had discovered something about that unnatural death? Wouldn’t that knowledge give someone who had murdered once, a reason to risk murder again?

The problem was, how would Brett know anything about a ten-year-old murder? And if Cosmo had been murdered, wouldn’t there have been some suspicion of it in all these years? There had never been a hint.

Another thought: if Brett was right, if my father had been murdered ten years ago, then he had likely been killed by someone I had known all my life.

On this comforting thought I dozed off.

When I opened my eyes again I was confused to hear someone tapping on my bedroom door. I was trying to work this out when the door opened. Adam stuck his head in and I remembered Brett was dead.

“Morning,” I said, trying to focus.

Adam came in and, to my surprise, sat down on the edge of the mattress. Cozy bedside chats had never been part of the big brother scenario.

“How are you this morning? The truth.”

“I’m fine,” I said truthfully. “How are you holding up?”

He looked tired. His blue eyes were rimmed with red, and his head had to be throbbing, but he said, “I’m okay. Thanks for putting up with me last night.”

I nodded.

“You’ll call the doctor today, right?”

“Sure.”

“Take it easy, okay? Rest. If you’re not up to answering more questions—”

“I’m fine.”

“You don’t have to prove anything.”

I pushed up on my elbows. “Adam, don’t treat me like an invalid. I can’t live that way.”

His face tightened. He nodded. There was something going on here that I didn’t understand. Maybe Adam didn’t know how to relate to me as a healthy adult. Maybe he didn’t
want
to relate to me man to man.

To distract myself from this idea I asked, watching his face, “Adam, suppose I
had
known how Brett died?”

He didn’t answer.

“Was it some kind of test?”

I thought that he wouldn’t answer that either, but he said finally, bleakly, “I had to know.”

“You thought I could have killed Brett?” For some reason this shocked me more than anything that had happened thus far.

“I didn’t know.”

“You didn’t?” I bunched a pillow under my head and considered this. It blew me away, because I was so sure Adam couldn’t have killed Brett, yet for all I knew he
could
have been just ahead of me on the stairs, and not coming down at all. “Do you know now?” I inquired.

“Yes.”

I didn’t know if I believed him or not. “Suppose I had killed Brett?” I was curious.

Adam patted my knee beneath the blankets and rose. I guess there are some questions it’s better not to ask.

Adam left after unsuccessfully trying to get me to eat breakfast. I tried to break it gently that I don’t eat breakfast. He argued that it was the most important meal of the day. I wasn’t sure if he was kidding or not.

I decided to forgo my morning swim, and logged on to my computer, but it was only after nine that my front door resounded beneath a peremptory knock. Sheriff Rankin nodded a genial good morning, asked how I was feeling, and invited me to accompany him down to the beach.

On the way down he casually mentioned that he’d interviewed the paramedics who had examined me the day before. Until that moment I don’t think I really appreciated that I was a suspect in Brett’s death. There’s naiveté for you.

“You were over the worst of it then, of course, so they couldn’t tell a lot.”

I nearly missed a step. I said, “You can talk to Dr. Hicks, he’s been my doctor all my life.”

“I spoke to Doc Hicks,” Sheriff Rankin assured me. “He was willing to confirm that you do have an arrhythmia of the heart, and that given the circumstances you described yesterday it could in theory have triggered an attack.”

“In theory?”

“In theory.”

We reached the bottom of the stairs. The beach was pristine, except for the soggy yellow crime scene tape posted around the wrecked dock, which still lay crunched in the sand. Sky and sea and shoreline looked as vivid as though freshly painted, all the colors intensely dark in the unreal witchlight of the impending storm. Sandpipers left tracks across the silken dunes. The borough where Brett’s body had lain was washed smooth and flat by the tide.

I showed the sheriff where Brett and I had stood talking.

“Run me through it one more time, Kyle,” Sheriff Rankin invited. “You heard a sound like—?”

“Groaning wood. Like something was tearing apart.”

We ran through it one more time. From the moment Brett had hailed me on the beach to the moment when I collapsed on the steps.

“Can I ask you something?” I asked.

“Ask away,” the sheriff said laconically.

“You must have examined the dock. Was it tampered with? How could it collapse like that?”

“It was an old structure, Kyle. That dock was put in by Drake Trent. He was a big star back in the Forties. Used to own MacKinnon’s place.”

“I know who Drake Trent was.”

“I guess you would, at that.” He spat out a dark stream of tobacco juice. “But to answer your question, yep, that dock was tampered with all right. The post was sawn right through. All that had to happen was someone lean against it, and over she went. Like Lincoln logs. Tell me again what happened once Hansen was pinned down?”

We went through that again.

“How come neither you nor MacKinnon mentioned yesterday that Hansen claimed someone was trying to kill him?”

I thought instantly of the missing weed killer.

“I—because I guess we didn’t believe it.”

“Might interest you to know the lab results Doc Hicks got from the night Hansen collapsed. Hansen was suffering from digitalis poisoning.”

I stared at him, struck dumb in every sense of the word.

“Digitalis; that’s what you take for your heart condition, isn’t it?”

“Digitalis and Quinidine. Derivatives.”

“Yeah. That’s what Doc Hicks said.”

“You think
I
poisoned Brett?”

“Did you?”

“Of course not.” I probably sounded more scared than convincing. “It would be stupid to use my own pills, wouldn’t it?”

Rankin shrugged. “Murderers aren’t the brightest folks, contrary to those books you write.”

“Look, I didn’t kill Brett. I didn’t bash his head in. I didn’t give him my heart meds.”

“Didn’t you notice you had half a bottle of pills missing?”

“Who says I do?” I tried to explain. “Even if the stuff was mine, I don’t take digitalis daily. Only when I have an attack. I haven’t needed it for quite a while.”

“Where do you keep these pills?”

“In the kitchen cabinet. What does it matter? Brett didn’t die from taking my heart medication.”

“He didn’t take digitalis by accident, did he? Was there any way he could have accidentally got hold of your pills?”

“No.”

“So someone fed it to him. Probably slipped it in his drink the night of that party MacKinnon held for the Berkowitzes.”

“That doesn’t make sense.”

“No? Who knows where you keep your heart pills?”

“I don’t know. It’s not a secret.”

“Adam MacKinnon know?”

“He does now. He got them for me yesterday. He had to ask though.” The memory of that reassured me.

“Who else knows?”

“It’s not a secret,” I repeated tersely.

“Anybody have a key to your place?”

“I don’t think so. Well, my grandfather probably does. Joel may.”

“Joel Shimada?”

I nodded. “He and Cosmo were pals from way back.”

“You and Brett pretty tight?”

“What?”

“You and Brett,” he explained painstakingly, as to one a bubble or two off plumb, “you get to be pretty good friends?”

“I guess so.”

“You don’t sound sure.”

“He was Adam’s friend and Adam’s my friend, so yeah, I made an effort.”

“How much of an effort?”

“What does that mean?”

“Hansen told Vince Berkowitz that you and him were lovers.”

“That’s a lie!”

Rankin studied me thoughtfully. “Well, maybe what he said was he believed you and him would be lovers before the summer was out.”

Now I was mad. Sheriff Rankin had lied about Brett claiming we were lovers; he could be lying about this as well. Or Vince could be lying.

“Bullshit,” I said. “Did you get that from Vince?”

He wiped his face as though I had spit at him. I felt moisture on my skin. It was starting to rain.

“You don’t think Berkowitz is a reliable source?”

“I think Vince—” I caught myself. “I think I’d have known if Brett and I were going to be lovers.”

The warm summer rain freckled the sand, turning it dark.

“Berkowitz says Hansen told him fucking you was the only way of keeping you and MacKinnon apart.”

His tone was deliberately offensive, his words crude. I could feel the blood draining out of my face. “I don’t believe that.”

“What is it that you don’t believe? That Hansen told Berkowitz? Or that he knew you and MacKinnon would be hump buddies before the autumn leaves were falling?”

My lips were stiff. I had to work to get the words out. “Any of it. I don’t believe any of it.”

“It’s true though, sonny boy.” He tucked a wad of tobacco in his mouth, worked it and added, “You don’t seem too broken up over your pal Brett getting his head cracked open.”

It took me a second to recover. I said sarcastically, “We all handle grief in our own way, Sheriff.”

He eyed me beneath his bristling brows. “I don’t remember you being such a smart-ass kid.”

“I don’t remember you ever finding my bike for me.”

To my surprise he laughed. “No, I guess not. That was what you might call the perfect crime. This one ain’t.”

When I got back to my cottage I called Joel.

He was taking Brett’s death more calmly than I had expected. Or maybe he was still numb. We talked for a while and then I asked, “Do you have a key to my house?”

There was silence on the other end of the line.

“Probably. Somewhere. Why?” Joel responded at last.

“The sheriff was asking.”

“We all have keys. Or did.”

“Who all?”

“Me. Micky. Adam.”

It was my turn to digest silently. “Why would you all have keys to my house?”

“To your father’s house.” Joel cleared his throat. “It wasn’t an official arrangement, but we used to take turns checking up on you. You were recuperating. You were still underage, and who knew when the hell Cos would be back. Hell, we’d been keeping an eye on you for the past sixteen years.”

I knew that. When my father was there the doors were generally unlocked anyway. I was used to Cosmo’s students and friends coming and going, but it gave me an eerie feeling to know anyone could have walked in on me at any time over the past four years. And it flat creeped me out to know someone could have come in and swiped those pills.

“Why?” Joel asked for the third time. “Why is that redneck so interested?”

I explained about Brett being poisoned with my heart pills. When I finished, Joel commented, “If you ask me, it’s the kind of thing Brett would do to himself for attention. He faked that drowning attempt, you know.”

“What are you talking about?”

“The night of the beach bonfire when someone allegedly dragged him under the water? It was a total hoax. He faked it. He told Vince. He wanted to see how everyone reacted.”

“But his foot was bruised.”

“My dear boy! And you call yourself a mystery writer?”

I couldn’t believe it. I sat there trying to put two and two together and kept coming up with sixty-nine.

Joel said, “I believe he swiped some of your meds and took them himself. You’ll notice he didn’t die.”

This seemed rather cool for someone who had been weeping over Brett a few weeks before. But maybe Joel had worked through his feelings for Brett.

“Eventually he did. Eventually someone smashed his head in.”

Joel considered this and returned to my original question. “To be honest, Kyle, I haven’t seen that key of yours in years. I guess someone could have taken it, but more likely it’s in the back of a drawer full of junk.”

That was probably true. Joel wasn’t the most organized guy in the world. He said, changing the subject, “Adam wants Brett buried in the old cemetery. Did he tell you?”

“No.”

“No one’s been buried there since Drake Trent. I don’t know what he’s thinking.”

I wasn’t sure why this idea seemed to agitate Joel.

“Probably that it’s a peaceful place. Peaceful and private. And beautiful, I think. Does he want me to ask my grandfather?”

“I think he plans on doing it himself. Asking, I mean.” Joel’s voice shook. “I think it’s disgraceful.”

“Why?”

“Shoving Brett off in a corner like—like a poor relation. Like a guilty secret.”

So much for thinking Joel had come to terms with his feelings for Brett.

“Joel,” I said, “Adam has been painting the cemetery all summer. Maybe he’s comforted by the thought of Brett being so near.”

Joel made a sound that could have been a sob or a snort, and hung up.

* * * * *

Adam had been in town seeing to the funeral arrangements. When he got home he called and asked if I could help him pack up Brett’s things. It didn’t seem tactful to point out the sheriff might plan on searching through them again. I said I’d be glad to help and headed across the field.