Murder Takes to the Hills (36 page)

“I thought you n’ me might do a
li’l
hip-hop
aroun
’ duh bed.”

“We might do a waltz, or a salsa or even a do-
si
-do—but don’t ever suggest hip-hop to me again. Got that?”

“Yes, ma’am.” I undressed and got into bed, counting softly: “
One
-two-three.
One
-two-three…”

CHAPTER THIRTY

I had been around art galleries on the Cape all my life and had come to two conclusions about them. Men who owned or managed them tended to dress up for work, perhaps to underscore that these premises were indeed dedicated to works of
art.
Women who owned or managed them were inclined to dress down, perhaps not wishing to compete with their wares for attention and appreciation.

When I called upon them with my photos, I just tried to be clean and neat and hope the pictures would speak for themselves. Usually it worked. This morning it would not have mattered had I been garbed in ragged shorts and a T-shirt smeared with muddy paw prints or a gold
lamé
gown with split skirt and deep décolletage.

I had already called upon one of my galleries in Wellfleet and restocked the most popular prints. They had also taken four new photos they liked and made a note to call me the beginning of June to see what refills they needed.

At my second gallery I received doubly upsetting news. Unknown to me over the winter one of the owners had developed a terminal illness. The partners had sold the gallery and returned to their native Texas to spend their last
months
together and near his family. The new owners imparted this news in the same sepulchral but somehow disapproving tones they used to tell me that they would no longer handle my photos. Now that they owned the place, they explained, they would handle only
true art
.

They turned businesslike immediately. She handed me an inventory list and a check for the six pictures they had just happened to sell in the off-season before they could get them off the wall. He gave me a carton holding the remainder. I staggered out the door, which neither of them offered to hold, and made my way down the sidewalk toward where I was parked. I felt saddened for the two previous owners. I decided my opinion that the two new owners bore a strong resemblance to members of the Addams family might be just a little overstated.

I would have staggered right past my friends Billy and Walter, had Walter not literally taken the heavy carton from my arms. They were both teachers and I wondered what they were doing wandering around the Wellfleet shops on a Monday. The school had to be closed for two days with some dire electrical problem, they explained, and they were just enjoying the good weather.

We walked on toward my car, with me delivering my screed in the whiny voice even I hate. They offered condolences on all counts and I shut up.

As Walter placed the carton of photos in my trunk, Billy snapped his fingers and hit me lightly on the shoulder.
 
“Boy, are we brain-dead or what, Walter?”

Walter and I both stared, assuming some explanation would follow.

“There’s that new gallery in Orleans…the wife of one of our teachers just opened it. We know them pretty well, and they’re good people.
 
Let’s take a run down there now. You’ve got plenty of samples to show her and even enough to leave some if she wants them. It won’t take long.”

We piled into my car, and I was more excited than I tried to show. I had never been able to place anything in Orleans. The introduction would help and it would be a real triumph for me if we could carry it off.

We did. Marian Prescott kept twelve shots with backups to hang in a good area.

“With people getting so interested in ‘green’ and protecting wildlife, this is a natural,” she said. “Stay in touch.” You bet I would!

We started back to my car and I repaid them slightly by warning against the Poly-Cotton Club’s current show. They were grateful for the information and pleased that Cassie had found another pilot.

“Two planes now!” Walter exclaimed. “She’ll be putting Delta out of business.”

“If she lives long enough.” I told them of Harmon’s latest drug imaginings and they got a real kick out of that. It was how we had met. Harmon had mistaken Walter for a murderous drug dealer victimizing elderly ladies.

“Well.” Billy laughed. “At least he is consistent.”

I dropped them at their car and went home, still sad about my ex-customer’s illness, but simultaneously elated by my new connection in Orleans.

And the week held still more welcome news for us. Wednesday evening Sonny and Trish stopped by on their way to a movie. Sonny had good news, or at least
I
thought it was.

“The young Lotharios and Stalker Travis pled out,” he announced. “So neither Cindy nor the
Wismer
boy will have to go through the stress of a trial. Now ain’t that great?”

I saw Cindy close her eyes and take a deep breath. I wondered if she was sending up a prayer of thanks or simply trying not to cry with relief. Possibly both.

“What did they plead guilty to?” I asked.

“All four pleaded guilty to using graphically suggestive and salacious language in public.”

I laughed. “Oh, come on, Sonny, you just made that up—that can’t be a law this day and age.”

“It can and is.” He took a cigarette from my pack, and I didn’t even glare. “Back in 1871 the daughter of one of the bank executives attended a girlfriend’s afternoon tea. Afterward she walks over to the bank and waits for her father to come out so they can stroll home together.”

He finally got the cigarette lit and continued. “She is standing on the sidewalk, leaning on her parasol. A young man mistakes her for a prostitute. He asks her, in apparently explicit words, to let him purchase what he assumes she was selling. The girl beats the man about the head with her umbrella and then goes screaming into the bank, police are duly summoned, and the law went onto the books, where it has dozed ever since.”

“How did you ever know about it?” Sonny occasionally surprised me to the core.

“Oh, partly old records—they can be fascinating, you know. And old newspapers and copies of personal journals the library has hung on to. And sometimes things the old geezers tell you about.”

“Has that law ever been used again?” He had me interested now.

“The latest account I have found was nineteen forty-two, when a drunken Coast Guardsman made essentially the same mistake with a Selectman’s young wife.”

“This is all fascinating,” Cindy added, “but what happened to our four men?”

“Ah, yes. Well the three young guys got six
month’s
probation, forty hours community service and—what doubtless hurt them the most—one week’s house arrest.”

“And that
bastard,Travis
?”

“The judge gave him two year’s probation, eighty hours community service and one month’s house arrest. And unofficial word has it, he will keep his job of twelve years, but with a temporary demotion and a transfer up-Cape.”

“Oh, Sonny! That’s
nothing!”
Cindy sounded furious.

“Cindy, it’s not as light as it may sound,” Sonny explained. “Two whole years of knowing the cops are breathing down your neck gets nerve-racking. Community service is not raking leaves in the park on a lovely autumn day: it’s cleaning the municipal restrooms, picking up trash from the sidewalks and gutters. It’s working the garbage trucks on nice hot days and mopping floors at town hall. And house arrest, I’m told, is no fun at all after the first couple of days. It’s not so much that your house is unpleasant, it’s knowing that you absolutely
cannot
leave it.”

“And Travis may get rather lonesome there,” Trish added with a wicked grin. “This is off the record, but Mrs. Travis was in our office to see Attorney Frost the other day. Of course, I have no idea as to their conversation,” she said with a simper, “But I believe it is public knowledge, since it was uttered in the reception room, that she is now visiting her mother in Lynn while she ‘does some thinking.’”

Even Cindy laughed at that. “I imagine Mrs. Travis now has the excuse she has been looking for the last twenty years.”

“Sonny, look at the time, we’ve got to run. The movie might actually start on schedule.” Trish got to her feet.

They left, carrying our thanks out the door with them, and we returned to the living room. Cindy turned to me on the couch.

“Sonny is quite the local historian, isn’t he.” Cindy commented.

“He actually does have an intellect,” I agreed. “He’s just afraid someone may notice it.”

“Strange,” she mused, “that’s usually a female trait.”

“In Sonny’s case, I’m pretty sure it is that he feels—perhaps with good reason—that people do not like having cops around who are too bright.”

“What do you think of this judge’s sentencing?
 
Not the young guys, they’ll probably learn a lesson that will hopefully mean something to them. But Travis?”

“Darling, I know Travis put you through hell and upset a number of other people as well. But I think the prosecutor was wise to accept his plea, and the judge was wise in his sentence. Travis is not, in fact, a criminal, he’s a dirty middle-aged man. I really do not think he is dangerous, but loss of job and pension plus a year in a prison might make him so.”

She thought that over. “I suppose.”

“And,
m’dear
, a trial is no fun, even for the innocent victim. The defense lawyer would make you out an hysterical woman with a thing going on the side with underage Larry
Wismer
when you got bored having a thing going with me.”

“Alex!” Then she began to laugh. “You’re probably right. Okay, okay. I surrender.”

I thought that was a fine idea, and leaned over to kiss her.

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

I had forgotten earlier this morning to give Cindy the three checks
I needed to deposit. It was Friday and I didn’t want them sitting around until Monday. I had learned the hard way not to hold checks from art galleries overlong. Sometimes their cash flow was problematic.
 
It didn’t really matter, I could stop in the bank on the way home from the firing range where I had a high noon appointment.

In order to protect my PI license to carry and my eligibility to be deputized to the Provincetown Police force, I had to spend an hour, twice a year on a firing range.
 
I always forgot the time and had to wangle an appointment whenever they could fit me in—like eight a.m. or four thirty p.m. or noon. Always times I would prefer to be somewhere else.
Ah,well
…it was my own fault.

Right now it was not quite ten o’clock and Fargo was staring intently at me, trying—I was fairly certain—to implant a thought in my mind. “Beach, Alex,
beach.
Please, please, please!”

Already there was a sign up in the parking lot, saying “No Dogs on Beach.” In a week or so there would be enough tourists to limit our beach runs to very early mornings. Today—the few people we would encounter would just have to share.

It was the only
Ptown
law I ever deliberately broke. I knew that, being Sonny’s sister and a sometime fellow cop, I would not be hassled by any patrolling officer unless I did something really bad. But I did not want to take advantage of being “family,” I did not want to embarrass Sonny, and I genuinely thought most laws were logical and good. But when it came to Fargo and tourists and the beach…screw ’em.

When we got to the beach, there were a few cumulus clouds lurking in the distance over the ocean. They would sail majestically in-shore later in the day, but they meant no harm, simply positioning themselves to form the palette for a delicate pink and orange sunset.

Fargo busted up a meeting of loudly protesting gulls. As they flapped over the low surf, he plowed through it, apparently happy in the frigid water. He came out shaking himself and rolled sensuously in the sun-warmed sand.