Wicked Fix (35 page)

"Poisoned ... My God, we've been poisoned!"

"We don't know what was in the glasses,"

Arnold said. "Let's not be jumping to conclusions."

His face, though, said otherwise. Reuben

Tate's death or even Weasel's was one thing; spiking

a preacher's lemonade with a dose of poison at the

town picnic was something else again.

"Bob, we should try to get Victor's attorneys informed.

If this is all part of a pattern, it's obvious that

Victor couldn't have--"

"Nothing's obvious," he replied flatly. "Except

maybe that getting lawyers to call back on a Sunday

night is impossible. And even if you did, getting the

state people to call them back, even later on a Sunday

night, is about as likely as walking on water."

"Well, I'm going to try. Who knows, maybe a miracle

actually will happen and they'll be in the office."

But of course they weren't. In the telephone alcove,

I ran the gauntlet of the attorneys' voice-mail while

sheets of rain cascaded against the darkened dining

room windows. Finally I got a human being, the an

swering-service operator.

Five minutes later I hung up, having been (1) assured

by her words that one of the partners would call

me back very soon, and (2) informed by her tone that I

shouldn't hold my breath. Urgent calls from the ex

wives of imprisoned murder suspects, she seemed to

feel, were not exactly tops on her list of items needing

the full, focused attention of her employers right that

very minute.

Another huge gust of wind rattled the windowpanes,

which now looked as if someone were out there

hurling big buckets of water against them. That siding,

I thought dismally, imagining the rain positively gushing

in through the rotten clapboards.

"Whatever it was," Arnold was saying when I got

back to the kitchen, "it was in Willow's glass, too."

"Arnold," I said, "you know what it was, just as

well as I do. It smelled just exactly like the bait Howard

Waldrop put out last summer when the rabid

skunk showed up."

It had been a real scare. Other than red ants,

skunks were the most numerous pests on the island;

bold and half-tame, they would saunter insolently right

up to you before turning to spray you with dead-on

accuracy. We'd had to keep our dogs and cats in, and

children were supervised scrupulously, after a skunk

staggered down Water Street snapping and foaming.

"Yeah," Arnold admitted. "I know. Smelled like

varmint bait. You can buy forty kinds of stuff smells

like that, any hardware store. But I'm not saying it's

anything till after the tests."

In the living room, Sam and Tommy were watching

a ball game; George and Wade were still at the park,

loading the tables into a truck and taking down the

tents.

Arnold frowned. "I got all the names, who was

there. Which doesn't mean someone couldn't have put

it in the glasses earlier, then took off. Christ, what a

mess."

The coffeemaker finished burbling so I got out the

cups and the cream and some sandwiches I'd put onto

a plate. Outside, the storm battered and hammered.

"At least with all this rain, I doubt many people

will be leaving the island tonight," I said as we sat

down. "You can talk to them while they're still here,

instead of having to find them at wherever they've gone

home to."

Bob nodded, biting into a chicken salad sandwich.

One of the drawbacks to working at any Eastport food

event is that you're unlikely to get any of the food

yourself.

"Unless some idiot tries driving over a flooded

causeway," he agreed darkly. "Which I have no doubt

some idiot is going to do. But we've got barriers set up

at our end, police at Pleasant Point've got barriers at

theirs, flashing lights and so on. High tide, all this

wind, decent storm surge--going over that causeway,

next couple hours, you better have pontoons."

A muffled pounding came from the back door;

Monday leaped and began barking. A moment later,

Marcus Sondergard came in, drenched to the skin.

"I ... I'm sorry," he managed, looking around

wildly. "I have to ..."

Monday stopped barking and started wagging;

once an intruder is actually inside the house, she feels,

the whole guard-dog act is pretty much beside the

point. Marcus's dark hair clung in sodden ringlets to

his head, his white shirt plastered to his skin, and he

was shivering hard.

"Come in here," I ordered. "We'll get you into

some dry clothes and get some hot coffee into you,

before you catch--"

"Your death, I'd been about to say, noting that the

rain had washed the makeup stuff off his hand. But I

couldn't see the mark on it without making too big a

point of it. Just then Sam stuck his head in from the

living room.

"Sam," I said, "take Marcus upstairs and find him

some of Wade's dry clothes to get into, please. And a

towel for his hair, and so on, all right?"

"C'mon," Sam said agreeably, and Marcus allowed

himself to be led away. When he returned, his

hair was not dripping, and he was wearing dry socks

and a gray sweatsuit, and not shivering quite so violently.

His hand was covered smoothly with surgical

makeup again. So he carries the stuff with him, I

thought.

But he still looked as if he had been run over by a

truck. "It didn't hit me," he said, wrapping his hands

gratefully around a mug of coffee, "until I was about

to leave the hospital."

He gazed around at us, his eyes huge and dark

with emotion. "The fellow from the ambulance service

told me he would drive me home. And I realized: Dad

wasn't with me."

Marcus made a helpless little sound like a laugh,

only it wasn't. "Knowing it was coming for as long as I

have, I wouldn't have thought it'd hit me so hard.

But ..."

"Wait a minute. You knew this was going to happen?"

Arnold looked astonished.

Marcus nodded, staring at his mug, not realizing

what Arnold meant. "Five years I've known. We both

did. Doctors told him he could live a long time or go

any second. A stretched place in a big artery like a

weak spot in a tire, was how they explained it to me. If

they operated on it he probably wouldn't survive, they

said. So they didn't."

He glanced up, caught Arnold's expression. "Oh,

you thought I meant ... No. Not that someone

would try to hurt him. I meant my being prepared for

his going ... naturally. Not this way. Who would

want to hurt Dad?"

That was my big question, too. Marcus hadn't had

time to do a perfect job with the cosmetic; the edges of

the mark showed long and slender, with some odd

shaped crescents at the center of it, like the edges of

petals. "What are your plans now?"

I put it generally, but the answer I wanted was

specific: Had he known about the life insurance?

Because if he had, I couldn't help thinking that a

grown man with an impatient woman waiting in the

wings might tend to get a little impatient himself, waiting

for dear old Dad to pop off as he was predicted to.

Add to that a big life-insurance payoff, so his son

didn't have to worry about money, and ...

Well, the comfort of a clear conscience can compete

very effectively with the lure of cold cash, in my

experience.

"I'm going to move to Portland, sell the Winnebago,

and open a music store," he said, "with the proceeds

of Dad's insurance."

So much for the idea that he might not have

known about his coming windfall, or that his thought

processes might be unhinged by grief. Still, he looked

stung by my narrow-eyed glance at him.

"I've known for a long time that Dad wouldn't live

forever. And he told me he'd taken out a policy for me.

Is it so terrible that I tried to think about the rest of my

life?"

Okay, so maybe it wasn't. I apologized to Marcus,

and if he knew I still had mental reservations, he didn't

show it.

"Anyway, I just felt ... well, lost, when I got

back home. All his things ... it didn't seem real that

he was gone. So I went out. I didn't realize how bad it

was, the storm. But once I was out, I got disoriented,

and when I saw your lights ... Well. I'm grateful for

the dry things, and the coffee. I'll be okay now."

"You're sure?" I followed him to the door. Arnold

was on his way out too and offered Marcus a ride back

to Heddlepenny House.

"Yep." He nodded decisively. Like his father, he

was either for real or one of the more accomplished

liars I'd ever met.

"Come on, Sondergard," Arnold growled, tugging

on his yellow slicker and pulling his black sou'wester

onto his head.

When they were gone I shoved the door shut

against a rain-filled gust of wind. In the darkness the

branches of the trees in the side yard lashed wildly,

yellow leaves showering from them.

"What do you make of that?" Ellie asked.

"Not sure. But if I were going to knock somebody

off, I'd do it when a couple of other people had already

been knocked off, wouldn't you?"

"You think Marcus might have poisoned his dad?

But they were so close."

"Right. Peas in a pod. Maybe," I said as I took my

rain slicker off the hook, "it got a little snug in there.

Maybe ..."

On the hall shelf lay the package Terence Oscard

had shoved into my hands as he rushed to help Hey

wood.

"Maybe helping Heywood along with a swig of

poison was just hastening the inevitable, in Marcus's

mind. Ending," I finished, "the suspense." Leaving Terence's

package where it was, I grabbed a pair of flashlights

and my car keys.

"Meanwhile," I said, "when Marcus left the bandstand

this afternoon, there were three glasses of lemonade

on that table. I know because I was looking at

them, thinking about putting out some more."

I dropped the car keys into my slicker pocket.

"When he got back onto the bandstand, there were