The Book of Old Houses (19 page)

“Enough,” I snapped, getting up. “He's spoiling my appetite retroactively.”

You, too,
I felt like telling Ann Talbert. But when I turned to where she'd been sitting, Ann was gone.

A band had
set up under the lights near the outdoor bar and begun playing waltzes. Night had fallen; George jumped down onto the fireworks barge, its running lights moving smoothly away into the darkness on the water.

Wade swung me into his arms and onto the dance floor, his hand between my shoulder blades warming through my skin and into my bones.

As he whirled me around and drew me near again a breathless laugh escaped me. “There's my girl,” he said. “I was starting to think I might not hear that laugh today at all.”

I can't dance a lick except in Wade's arms. “And that,” he added as the fireworks began, “would've been a shame.”

A
boom!
shook the dock and a bright-white chrysanthemum erupted over the water. With a whizzing sound, a twisty-purple sizzler with a flaring red tail spiraled up.

“That DiMaio guy giving you problems?” Wade asked. “Because if you want, I can drop-kick him off the end of the pier.”

I laughed again, mostly from knowing that if I asked him to, he would. The pleasant feeling didn't last long, though, as over Wade's shoulder I spotted Bert Merkle coming out onto the dock.

With his wolfish profile and a calculating expression on his unshaven face, he looked like a predator casually easing into the henhouse.
Scram,
I thought, then lost sight of him in the crowd as Bob Arnold made his way over to us.

“State guys'd like to talk to you, Jacobia,” he told me. “Just routine stuff. How Jason seemed to you and so on. Tomorrow?”

I nodded. He went on to find Ellie, to tell her, I supposed, the same thing. Wade and I moved to the edge of the floor. A barrage of fireworks went off all at once, like fiery confetti overhead.

“Oohh,”
said the voices of the people on the dock.
“Ahhh.”

Then came the scream, sounding at first like an outburst of hilarity. But when it came again, fainter, an uneasy ripple moved through the crowd.

People quit dancing. The music stopped. The dock lights came on; we all blinked in the sudden glare.

“Somebody fell,” a woman said. “Off the dock, someone . . .”

I counted heads; Ellie, Bella, my father, and Wade were all visible. But where was Dave DiMaio ?

Then I spotted him. He'd climbed up onto the dock railing.

“Hey, get down from there!” Bob Arnold roared, trying to see out into the water and to move the anxious crowd back.

Dave's hand shielded his eyes from the overhead lights. From the fireworks barge, a barrage went up, heavy blasts dumping pools of colored illumination onto the black waves.

Another scream came from the water, fainter still. An outboard engine fired up nearby but if they couldn't find her in the dark—it was a woman's voice, I was pretty certain—a boat wouldn't be much help.

I pushed through the crowds to the dock railing. “Where?” Bob Arnold demanded of DiMaio , struggling meanwhile to release an orange life ring from the safety line tied to the rail-post.

“I don't know,” DiMaio replied, squinting into the darkness. “I thought I saw something, but . . .”

Bob pulled a utility knife from the clutch of equipment on his duty belt and freed the life ring. But he still didn't know where to throw it. Just then a fourth scream came, the sound of a last gasp if I ever heard one.

The fireworks barge turned its searchlight on. The fat white beam strobed the water, tipping the waves with its icy glow.

“Wade,” I began urgently.

Grimly he eyed the proceedings. “Nothing we can do.”

Another low rumble approached from the south, a much bigger beam on the water ahead of it. The Coast Guard, I realized with momentary relief; they practiced this stuff all the time.

But by now, minutes had gone by. And in fifty-degree water, that was time enough.

Still on the rail, Dave DiMaio scanned the waves as the searchlights crosshatched. How he managed to keep his balance up there I had no idea, especially when he began kicking his shoes off.

“No,” I whispered, aghast. Because maybe he was a swimmer and maybe he wasn't, but either way he had no idea how strong the currents were here.

Bob Arnold stuck a hand out to snatch the foolhardy wouldbe rescuer down from his perch. But as he did so, Dave jumped.

And swam straight out. “He's a goner,” I heard someone say.

“DiMaio!” Bob shouted. “Stop! Tread water and wait!”

“Attention, you in the water!” came an amplified voice from the Coast Guard's vessel. Its deck lit up brightly, it maneuvered to where DiMaio swam.

“Stand by!” the voice ordered as the crew members took their rescue stations.

DiMaio 's face was a tiny, intermittent dot of white in the floodlit water. Then it vanished. Two Coast Guard rescue swimmers went over the orange craft's side as in the distance the low
whap-whap
of a helicopter's rotor grew louder.

“Where is he?” I whispered to Wade. But I was afraid I knew.

“Come on,” Wade said, tightening his arm around my shoulder. “You don't have to see any more of this.”

Still I resisted as George Valentine leapt from the docking barge and came toward us. “Why the hell did that idiot jump in?” he demanded. “Didn't he think one drowning was enough?”

Scanning the far side of the dance area, he spotted Ellie and hurried to wrap her in an embrace. Over by the outdoor bar I spotted my father and Bella, she with a hand to her lips and he with an arm around her; for once, she wasn't trying to shake him off.

The helicopter arrived with its own set of lights. Crisscrossing the waves, the beams moved like fingers pointing at nothing. “Who was it?” one of the busboys asked Wade.

“Some woman,” answered the band's guitarist, coming out to start packing up his stuff.

Because the party was over. “One guy in the bar said he was right there when it happened. Said he saw her go by on the way up and over, and then she was gone.”

He closed the snaps on his guitar case. “Guy said she had on these huge earrings.”

A horrid suspicion struck me. “Wade,” I began just as Ellie hurried over to me. “You don't suppose . . .”

“George talked to Bob Arnold,” she broke in. “Bob says Ann Talbert's things are still upstairs in the coat room. Jacket with ID in the pocket. And nobody can find her.”

The helicopter rose and swung away, then steadied to resume the search. “Tide's turned,” Wade observed.

“She wouldn't leave without her things,” Ellie said.

“No.” I looked out to where the Coast Guard's
Zodiac
had paused in its own search pattern, its strobe motionless. Suddenly a line flew out from the craft, briefly shining.

“Hey!” A shout went up from the local men still clustered at the end of the dock. “They've found someone!”

“I've got to go,” said Ellie. “George is picking me up out front.”

Her face was pale with anxiety and dampened by mist; her red hair, escaped from the combs she'd pushed into it, clung wetly in tendrils on her white forehead. She gave me a quick hug, her eyes conveying what we both knew: that Dave DiMaio had been there when Ann Talbert bragged to me about having the old book.

And that he'd been out here somewhere when she went over the rail. Not that it couldn't have been an accident. The rail was high and extremely sturdy, as it had to be for the public, but she'd been under the influence. She could've climbed up partway onto it, then leaned over too far. Or maybe somebody helped her, pointing something out to her—something that wasn't there—and giving her a shove.

As Ellie departed, I thought about how easily it could have been done, at night in a crowd with everyone watching fireworks.

“They're pulling someone in. Looks like . . . alive.” Bob Arnold came back with the state cops. One carried a pair of field glasses, peered through them.

Even without the glasses I could make out a motionless shape being hauled over the
Zodiac
's transom. “I don't know,” I began doubtfully. “I can see a person, but . . .”

But then the shape moved. More of the vessel's deck lamps came on: dark hair. White shirt. And . . . a striped tie.

Suddenly the figure clambered up, staggered to the rail.

“Dave DiMaio ,” I said. “You're right, he looks okay.”

As for Ann Talbert
. . . I've got that book . . . and I'm keeping it.
God, why hadn't she just kept her mouth shut?

“Looks like they've got another one.” Bob had taken the field glasses from the state guy. “Black pants, white shirt.”

“That's what Ann Talbert was wearing. Is she . . . ?”

“They're doing CPR.”

But she'd been in the water half an hour, wearing leather boots too heavy to swim in. They'd have filled up fast and hauled her down like a couple of anchors.

Wade put his arm around me; I leaned against him sorrowfully. As medical first responders, Ann's rescuers couldn't pronounce her dead
or
quit trying to revive her.

Not without a licensed physician's okay. So she couldn't be
officially
drowned until she reached dry land. But then . . .

Then she would be.

Chapter
14

F
ancy meeting you here.”

Dave DiMaio looked up, startled by my voice and blinded by the flashlight I aimed at his face. It was just past midnight, and when I surprised him he'd been trying unsuccessfully to remove a window screen from Ann Talbert's Lyon Street house.

“Turn that thing off, will you?” He held one hand up, squinted at me through his fingers. “I've got a killer headache.”

“Very funny.” I scanned the ground around his feet with the flashlight, then aimed it at his pants pockets. He'd changed clothes, but the dry ones he had on now were all smutched with moss and soil, his shoes and hands grubby.

“I don't have any weapons on me,” he said, understanding my scrutiny. “And I didn't do anything to that woman. I didn't even see her after we left the restaurant's dining room.”

Lyon Street was a short, tree-lined dead-ender about halfway between downtown and Dog Island, a detour on my way home after finally driving Bella to hers. It had been late by the time we got settled after the upsetting evening, and she'd insisted on being right to hand, as she put it, in case we wanted anything.

All I wanted was a straight answer, such as for instance to the question of whether or not Ann had really had the old book.

She could have been lying. A couple of drinks had perhaps fueled a malicious desire to put the screws to me.

To get back at me, maybe, for not caving in to her demand for the thing in the first place. Or she could've been telling the truth.

Her house was a white cottage with a wraparound porch and a lot of overgrown forsythia bushes mostly shielding it from the street. The porch light was on and a lamp burned low in the front-hall window.

“So what are you doing here?” I asked DiMaio. As I drove by, a tiny white penlight beam had flitted intermittently behind the bushes; not enough, probably, to alert any neighbors.

But it had alerted me. No answer from DiMaio, and anyway I knew. He wanted the book, too.

I took a step closer. Right now Bob Arnold was still busy filling out paperwork on Eastport's second unnatural death in one day—a modern record for us—and the state cops were probably already in their motel rooms, watching the late-night rebroadcast of
SportsCenter
on ESPN.

Yeah, blatant stereotyping; guilty as charged. And what the heck, maybe I was wrong. Maybe they were listening to opera.

Either way, I was alone out here. DiMaio took a jackknife out and unfolded a blade big enough to gut an elk with.

“Hey, hey,” I objected as he approached the window screen with it. So much for no weapons. I wondered what he thought might qualify as one, an AK-47? “Don't do that.”

Because I wanted in there as well, and I didn't want a lot of break-in evidence left behind. I moved in alongside him, hoping whoever had put modern aluminum storm windows on this old house was just as cheap and careless as whoever had installed mine.

“Hold this,” I ordered, handing him the flashlight and craning my neck to examine the window edge. Bingo; the gap I wanted was there between the screen and the frame.

I put my hand out for the knife. “Have you got a pry tool on that?”

Scowling, he folded the elk-eviscerator away and pulled out another gadget, like a Swiss Army knife only larger.

Much larger. Whatever else I might have to say about Dave DiMaio —such as for instance that maybe he was a murderer—he came well-equipped.

Which, I reflected as I struggled with the aluminum screen, could be a good thing or a very bad one depending on how the next few minutes turned out. The window's lower ledge was about chest-high on me, so I had to work with my arms extended fully upward; ouch.

But the tool on the gadget was just right for my purposes. I shoved it in between the screen's edge and the frame. “Hold the flashlight steady. If anyone comes, switch it off.”

“Yes, yes,” he said, his voice heavy with strained patience. “I've done this kind of thing before.”

“Somehow that information doesn't comfort me.” I slid the blade up and down. Right along here somewhere should be a . . .

“Got it.” The screen's metal edge flexed and so did the frame it was fitted into, due to both being made of a substance just slightly stiffer than your average cardboard.

The tablike trigger that held the screen in its channel moved when I twisted the blade near it. But the screen didn't pop loose. “Wait here a minute,” I told DiMaio.

Back at Wade's truck, I groped around in the darkness under the front seat until I found the short iron pry bar he kept there. Returning to the house, I kept the bar's curved end in my hand with the shaft parallel to my arm until I got past the hedge. Just in case anyone did happen to glance out a neighboring window, I didn't need to be seen carrying forced-entry equipment.

Prying the screen out with the pry bar bent it, but I didn't care. “Okay, give me a . . .”

But he was already down on one knee in the classic proposing-marriage pose, the other knee forming a step.

Or a trap. If I stepped on his knee to get myself up to the window and through it, he'd have time to do something to me. On the other hand, the look of frustration on his face when I showed up—not to mention the dirt on his clothes—told me he'd been here awhile, trying to get in.

No surprise there, either. Ann had been a single woman living alone, so she'd been careful about security. The big Block lock I'd glimpsed on the front door, for instance, screamed
Don't bother
at burglars or other intruders.

Or anyway she was as careful as a person could be and still have those crappy screen windows. She probably hadn't known they were so flimsy.

What it all added up to was that if he wanted to get in, Dave needed me to get in first. Then I could open a door for him from inside.

All this went through my head in a fraction of a second while he crouched there with one knee out, waiting for me to step onto it. “Okay,” I said. “I'll need a little bit of a running start.”

He frowned questioningly. “To get me up there enough so I can haul myself through,” I explained. “I don't have enough upper-body strength to . . .”

I waved at the window ledge, just high enough to make what I was saying believable. “Get ready,” I said. “Just brace yourself a little and I'll do it on the count of three, okay? One . . .”

On
two,
I took a running step forward onto his knee, grabbed the window ledge, and pulled hard on it while pushing off with my foot. The change in plan startled him enough so I was able to vault over and inside before anything untoward happened.

Such as him grabbing my ankle and then having another knife. Or the gun . . . Quickly, however, I stopped worrying about that and started worrying about my landing.

Luckily, no sharp-edged furniture happened to be in my way. No rug, though, either. Wincing, I got up from the hardwood floor.

“You all right?” he whispered outside.

Like he cared. “Uh-huh. Pass me the screen.”

He handed it in. I slid it back into its channels, hammering with my fist on the bent part. But all it had to do now was look good, not work well, so I didn't waste much time on it.

“Go to the back door,” I said, and the penlight moved away as I felt around for a lamp and switched it on.

The room it illuminated was an office, a very nice one. Tiled fireplace with a green ceramic woodstove fitted into it, wooden file cabinets, an oak desk with a cushioned swivel chair.

On the desk stood a computer hard drive and a sleek, black screen. Bookshelves lined the room. But my book wasn't in any of them. I yanked the desk drawers out fast, one after another; no.

A manila envelope was in the wastebasket: addressed to Ann, no return address, and the size was right. But I couldn't read the postmark and DiMaio was already knocking impatiently.

In the kitchen my nose wrinkled at smells of rancid milk, old coffee grounds, a sour dish rag. Bella would've had a field day, here. DiMaio knocked again, harder this time; I moved to the back door. But then I paused, noticing a phone on the wall.

Its buttons were lit, and when I checked, it had a dial tone, too. Which meant that on his way around the house, DiMaio hadn't cut the wires. So I could call Bob Arnold,
then
let DiMaio in.

Or I could alert no one, stay, and perhaps learn more about what if anything was in here. So let's see: bail out or find out?

“Hey,” DiMaio said urgently. “Where are you?” He rattled the doorknob.

“Coming.” Crossing the darkened kitchen I put a hand out, searching for a table or countertop to balance and locate myself. But instead my fingers found something that was soft, skinlike, and I jerked back, gasping.

She'd left the book right out on the table. Swiftly I grabbed it, stuffed it into the back of my pants, and dropped my shirttail over it.

The door rattled again, harder. When I opened it, DiMaio came in looking angry.

“You know, if you'd stop being so pigheaded and listen, you'd realize . . .”

“What?” I demanded. “That maybe you poisoned Jason Riverton and pushed Ann Talbert?”

“Don't be stupid. I nearly drowned trying to save her.”

“Maybe so. But right now as far as I'm concerned it's a good bet that either Merle killed Jason . . . or you did.”

“Right, and then I typed my own initials—” Suddenly the kitchen's fluorescent overhead light went on, startling us both.

“What in the world are you two doing here?”

It was Ellie, with a house key in her hand.

“Where'd you get that?” I asked, and she made a
you-should-have- brought-me-along, shouldn't-you?
face at me.

“Bob Arnold sent me. Ann's body's at the hospital in Calais and they want to know, is there a next of kin they can notify?”

DiMaio looked disgusted at the appearance of yet more company on what he'd clearly hoped would be a solo visit. “And you just happen to have a key to her house because . . . ?”

“I didn't. Bob did. Ann went to Florida last winter. She gave him one while she was gone. It's been in his office ever since.” Her tone turned businesslike. “So now that we're here, let's get to it, shall we? Probably there's a desk somewhere.”

“With an address book, maybe,” I agreed, wanting to stay off the subject of anything else with pages in it.

Such as the ones stuffed in my pants.
But DiMaio didn't move. “Listen, you two, this may be just a game to you, but—”

Ellie turned. “You mean like the one you're playing? You act like you're harmless. And we're supposed to believe it because . . . why was that, again?”

She rushed on, beginning to sound angry. “Oh, I remember now. Because you say so. While you lie and snoop, sneak around and tell tall tales about—”

“But it's all . . .” Dave tried interrupting her. But no dice.

“You, who blew into town one minute and two people were dead the next! Not counting the first one in Orono,” she added, raking him with her eyes.

That was Ellie: the iron hand in the gingham glove. “Does he have weapons?” she asked me. “Because if he does have any we should take them, and if not . . .”

She turned back to DiMaio. “Then maybe he should just sit down and shut up.”

“You've got it all wrong,” he protested. “I keep telling you I didn't take the gun. Or do any of the other things you seem to think I did.”

He looked down at his hands. “And . . . keep quiet about Horace, all right? Just . . . you don't know anything about him.”

He paused, getting control of his voice. Then: “Horace was the best friend I ever had. I was a skinny, dumb kid with acne, horn-rims, and a drinking problem. All I cared about was bottles and books.”

He took a shuddery breath. “Horace taught me and other kids like me that the things we were interested in were valuable. And that so were we. He taught us that books, even the weird, unusual books everyone else said we were wasting our time on—that they were
about
something. And he encouraged us to get out there and find out for ourselves what it was. He gave us—he gave
me—
the whole world. But I never thanked him. I thought—” His voice broke. “I thought there would be time.”

“Only there wasn't, was there?” another voice asked.

The woman who appeared in the kitchen doorway was in her early twenties, slender and deeply tanned with long blonde hair curving smoothly to her shoulders.

“And who,” she added unpleasantly, staring at DiMaio, “did
that
work out just fine for, I wonder?”

She wore a blue crew-neck sweater and tan slacks with soft-looking tan leather sandals on otherwise bare feet. “Hello, Dave. Long time, no see.”

She laughed softly. “Never, actually.” It was the woman who'd been driving the red Miata.

“Nice story,” she added, not sympathetically. “I'm Liane Myers,” she said. “Horace Robotham's daughter.”

DiMaio's mouth dropped open. “And I'm here to give this jerk a run for his money. Literally,” she finished.

“I don't intend
to make any trouble for you,” Liane Myers declared the next morning in my kitchen; yeah, right.

“Fine kettle of fish,” Bella had fumed when I told her the story. Well, except for the part about getting back the old book.

Which was now up on the third floor of my house under a floorboard; a nailed-down floorboard, the hiding place disguised with old nails and a newly applied coating of workroom grime.

Because maybe DiMaio had been telling the truth and maybe he hadn't. But the last person who'd gabbed about having that book was lying in a morgue room and I didn't want to become her next-drawer neighbor.

“Seems to me we should put a drawbridge on the causeway,” Bella had grumbled as I looked through the mail: bills, several more bills, and to top it all off a couple of bills. The final envelope was full of coupons, none of which were for anything we ever bought.