I left cash on the bar and slid off my stool. I had heard what I wanted to hear. Unless people were being coy, it didn’t sound as though hotel employees and regulars at the Livery were aware that Miranda was fooling around with Brad on the side. I wasn’t surprised. She’d obviously worked incredibly hard to conceal it, and if it hadn’t been for Ted’s watching them share a cigarette and growing suspicious, then no one but Brad and Miranda would know that they meant anything to each other besides employer/employee. It made me realize that Miranda probably planned on using Brad to kill Ted from the very beginning. She’d never gone to Cooley’s. Brad had never come to the Livery. My guess is that the only place they had ever been physical was in the house that was being built, and only when no other employees were on the premises.
After lunch I returned to my room to get my hiking shoes and a windbreaker in order to walk the cliff walk. I was looking forward to it. The weather was brisk and gusty, the ocean that I’d seen from my hotel room window gray and wind-chopped. I’d checked the weather on my phone, and it looked like there would be a major rainstorm, but not till later in the day. I exited the hotel and crossed Micmac, the wind buffeting my clothes against me. I worked my way down the rudimentary steps that led to the brief snippet of beach where the cliff walk began. The only other beachgoers were a stationary man and a chocolate Lab that raced in great loping strides after a tennis ball that the man threw from a plastic grabber. I proceeded immediately to the path; it was high tide, and the first hundred yards were slick with seawater that had crested over the flat rocks, but after that, the path went higher and cut inland so that a strip of stunted trees and bushes—mostly bittersweet, its yellow berries splitting open to reveal the red underneath, and winterberry—protected me from the wind. I walked slowly, not so much to be careful, but because I was savoring the beauty of the walk. I have never been a fan of the seashore—all those sedentary oiled bodies spread out along the beach like pieces of meat under a broiler. Maybe I’m biased, since my pale, freckled skin turns to a blistering red instead of a tan. I do like to swim but prefer the water of lakes and ponds to the salty brine of the ocean, and I have never been able to abide the feel of sand clinging to my feet and legs. But this particular stretch of Maine shoreline felt different to me. Maybe it was just the dramatic weather and the scudding clouds, but along this path I felt enveloped by beauty, by the primal force of nature. The large slabs of gray rocks were so much more appealing than the impermanent stretches of beach most people crave. I took deep breaths of the air as though I were thirsty for it.
There was no one else on the path that day. I wasn’t surprised. By the time I reached the end, with its view of the back of Ted and Miranda’s house, the wind had picked up, and pockets of rain had begun moving sideways, drumming at my raincoat.
I looked around for the spot where Ted might have propped himself with his binoculars. There were several, but a grassy hummock behind a low twisted tree seemed to provide the most cover. Ted’s binoculars must have been good ones, since the house seemed an impenetrable distance away, across a stretch of ugly bulldozed land. I considered crossing the grounds and taking a closer look at the house, but I worried that Brad, or other workmen, might be there. Instead, I turned back. Waves were breaking on the rocks and sending up frenzied explosions of seawater and foam. I turned my face into the slanting rain, no longer worried about getting soaked, and walked carefully and purposefully back along the path.
At the inn I went to the small fireside bar on the lobby level and ordered a hot whiskey—my father’s go-to winter drink—and took the drink back up to my room, where I sipped at it while soaking in the extra-deep tub. I felt good and had to remind myself that I was in Kennewick for a purpose, that I had a friend to avenge. After my bath I took a short nap, then got back into the tight jeans I’d worn the night before, overapplied my makeup, and drove myself to Cooley’s.
I’d been there three hours, had nursed four light beers, when I decided that Brad was probably not going to show. The tourists had left, and so had the two ladies at the bar. Three lone men had entered since then, and each time they had come swinging through the outside door, shrugging rain off their coats, I had expected Brad. But one was in his early twenties, one was a pear-shaped man with a full beard, and the third came in wearing a blue blazer over a collared white shirt and a pair of pressed jeans. He was the right age, I thought, about forty, but clean-shaven. Still, I watched him carefully. It was possible Brad had shaved the goatee that Ted had mentioned, and it was possible that he was dressed up for a reason. Maybe meeting a new client. Maybe waiting on a date. He caught me looking at him, raised an eyebrow in my direction, and lifted his pint glass of beer. I stared at my phone to discourage him from coming over. I had decided it probably wasn’t Brad. He was seated close enough for me to see the softness of his hands, and the frosted tips of his hair, and unless Brad was a criminal mastermind who had entirely changed his appearance, I doubted it was he. I paid my bill with cash and tottered out of Cooley’s on the high heels I wasn’t used to wearing.
“Don’t leave on my account,” said blue blazer as I walked past him.
I turned and appraised him. “What’s your name?” I asked.
“Chris.”
“Chris, where do you work?”