Chapter 19
I t was a lethal combination of alcohol and drugs, the alcohol being a single malt whiskey that Horace drank on his porch with a nightly regularity matched only by his walks along the beach with Red.
“My sleeping pill,” he told anyone who happened to stop by, and then he would offer them a glass. “Better than those blasted drugs.”
He’d sit in the old rocking chair, his fingers wrapped around the stubby glass, until the aches of being old subsided and sleep seemed imminent.
But that night the whiskey had an extra kick, enough morphine to kill a horse, Jerry said, a fact kept discreetly away from reporters. It was a miserable-tasting whiskey, in most people’s opinion, thick and dark, so Horace probably never noticed.
• • •
Sometimes staying close to home is the best option. Especially after a murder. That’s when the news, if it hadn’t made the morning paper, would leak out in bits and pieces. No one knew for sure what was true and what was rumor. Questions would be tossed back and forth without any hope of answers. The uneasy, uncomfortable rumblings before the storm arrived.
To avoid all that, Ben and Nell decided on an early Sunday breakfast at Annabelle’s, before the restaurant filled with friends and neighbors, with gossip and concern.
But a call from Izzy stopped them before they got out of the house.
“The baby?” Ben mouthed when he realized who it was.
Nell laughed and shook her head.
“Beach time,” Izzy said. “We’ll bring blankets, coffee, and a nice surprise.”
“Paley’s Cove,” Nell mused as she and Ben drove around the bend toward the northern part of the shoreline. “The last time I was here, Izzy wasn’t herself. Something was bothering her. And then all the things that have happened down here since. I’m surprised she didn’t suggest the yacht club or Long Beach or Good Harbor.” Perhaps Izzy had turned the corner and those darker days were behind her. Perhaps it meant the baby wouldn’t be long in coming. And perhaps the surprise would be names for the baby, something Izzy and Sam had held close and quiet all these months.
The car rounded the final curve, and the cove came into view. It was nearly empty this early on a Sunday, but eerily bright, with shards of sunlight cutting into the ice blue water. They didn’t see signs of Sam or Izzy at first, not until they’d parked near the stone wall and walked out onto the flat sand.
They heard them before they saw them. Laughter, a whistle. And then a barefoot pregnant woman, her hair loose and flying about her bare shoulders, running along the sand in a tank top and shorts. A sandy-haired man flinging a gnarled piece of driftwood into the sea.
And the long golden hair of a dog moving with the wind as he leapt into the cold water, then ran back to shore, his coat now slick and smooth against his body and a sea-soaked branch between his white teeth.
Izzy waved, and then they ran—all three of them—across the smooth sand to Ben and Nell.
“I couldn’t wait,” Izzy said.
Red sat down between the two tall figures, his tail thumping on the wet sand, his tongue hanging out as he panted heavily.
“We called the vet,” Sam said, “and she agreed to spring Red early, not make him stay caged until tomorrow. He’s in great shape; Horace took good care of his buddy.”
“We thought bringing him down here for a while where he lived most of his life would make him more comfortable.”
“I think it worked,” Ben said, scratching the dog behind his ears. “He seems pretty comfortable to me.”
“He knows something is amiss, for sure—he keeps looking up at the house,” Sam said, pointing across the street to the small Stevenson house. It sat on a lane off the main road, but faced the sea, its nondescript siding and low picket fence blending into the landscape so most people wouldn’t look twice at it—unless you were looking for it, or for the old man who sat on its porch watching the world go by.
“But we’ve been distracting him, walking Horace’s daily route, getting him used to us on a path he knows.”
Izzy pointed down toward the far end of the cove where the rocks began in earnest and the land rose to anchor the Cliffside mansions. “Our blanket is down there.”
Nell slipped off her sandals and hooked a finger through the straps. They walked leisurely down the beach, the wind blowing salty air across the stretch of sand and Red leading the way. Every now and then he’d run to chase a gull or catch Sam’s Frisbee, then happily return to the group.
In the distance, beyond the blanket, was the diving shed, once a boathouse, tucked into the side of the rise in land. Nell glanced over as they got closer, then looked away, finding it made her uncomfortable. Unbidden images came into her head of Sam and the others coming up from the early-morning dive minus Justin Dorsey, who lay dead in the water.
“The storage building was painted a few days ago,” Sam said. “The gray blends in perfectly with the rocks. It’s not so noticeable.”
“Franklin mentioned doing that. Probably a good idea.” Ben looked over at the shed. “He thought it’d make it less obvious, less of an ‘attraction,’ if a crime scene can be called that.”
“He wants to erase the memory of that bad dive so the divers will keep coming back. It’s such a great spot. In fact, Danvers bought the supplies we used that day, then donated them back to the dive shop to use to train other would-be divers, kids who couldn’t afford them otherwise. He wants to start some kind of program,” Sam said. “The guy thinks of more than stocks and bonds, believe it or not.”
“Maybe it’s the prospect of fatherhood,” Izzy said. “See what a nice guy it’s made out of you?” She eased herself down on the blanket.
Sam threw the Frisbee at her, but Red barked cheerfully and caught it cleanly before it landed on Izzy’s disappearing lap.
“Justin’s death affected Franklin,” Ben said. “He felt some responsibility, I guess, because that land is technically Danvers property.”
“And he had given him such a hard time not long before Justin was murdered,” Izzy added.
“So that’s his shed that the diving club uses?” Nell asked.
Sam nodded. “As far as I know, it’s only used now as a place for the divers to keep their equipment.”
“Is it always locked?”
“Far’s I know. Franklin’s a stickler for security. Andy Risso has keys to it, Gus McClucken. And the Danverses, of course.”
Ben looked back toward the small house on the lane. “And Horace Stevenson,” he said.
They all followed his look, as if somehow the connection between the two places would appear in the sand, like the imaginary lines on a TV screen showing the line of scrimmage. And the key would go sliding along it, back and forth.
“It must have been pretty awful for Red that night,” Izzy said. The dog sat close beside her, straight and alert, as if assessing the conversation.
“You two have done a good thing here, giving him a home,” Ben said. “It would have made the old man happy, not to mention what it’s doing for Red.”
Red’s tail flapped against the sand.
Izzy picked up a floppy straw hat from the blanket and pulled it onto her head, one hand pressing it down as she looked back toward the sea. “Maybe we needed him as much as he needed us.” She wrapped an arm around the dog. Red pressed his wet nose against her skin.
“So, who else lives on that lane?” Sam asked as he and Ben looked back at Horace’s house, then started walking toward the beach-access road for a better look. “Anyone who might have seen anything?”
Nell followed. “There aren’t any streetlights up there.”
“Right. Horace didn’t sleep much at night. So he could have been sitting out here any time of night.”
Izzy thought back. “Friday night. We were all out on your deck that night, Uncle Ben. The sky was pitch-black. No moon. A perfect night to not be seen.”
Ben looked hard at the house, taking it all in. “Jerry thinks the person who killed Horace wanted it to look like a suicide. And to look like Horace had killed Justin. Hence the key and the scuba book they found on the table.”
“And why exactly would he do that?” Nell asked.
“Right. Why? The police had had some reports that Justin hung out down here. People saw him on his bike more than a few times.”
Nell looked at Izzy. “We saw him here one morning, Izzy and I, remember?”
“He had a surfboard. Is that what people reported?”
“No. One of the neighbors who lived at the other end of the cove, over near the steps, saw him sometimes in the evening, just sitting on the steps. She’d be out on her porch and noticed that it was the same person every night, but not much more. She recognized that old yellow bike Janie gave him.”
“Who was he with?” Nell asked.
“Alone, the neighbor said.”
“That doesn’t give Horace a motive for killing him,” Nell said.
“I wonder,” Izzy said, pulling herself up from the blanket and a sleeping Red. “This beach was almost sacred ground for Red and Horace. What if Justin was doing something . . . I don’t know what, maybe something Horace considered offensive or wrong? We know Justin wasn’t an altar boy.”
They fell silent for a minute, trying to dig deep to imagine what that might be.
“But what would he see?” Nell asked. “His eyesight was so bad.”
“I don’t know. But Horace had ways of seeing, somehow, that didn’t need eyes.”
Nell walked toward the road, looking over at Horace’s house. “It doesn’t sound like the killer was a professional, if Jerry figured out so quickly that it wasn’t a suicide or a natural death.”
“Yes,” Ben said. “He said as much. It was very amateurish. Not thought out. Desperate, in a way. And Justin’s murder was similarly orchestrated. It worked, Justin died, but it didn’t appear to be carefully planned, according to Jerry.”
“It was just someone who wanted Justin dead.” Izzy rubbed her bare arms. “It’s worse somehow, knowing it was just a person. A person like us.”
She looked back at the blanket. As if sensing her look, Red sat up suddenly, then shot off the blanket and raced toward them, a flying ball of fur.
Izzy leaned toward him and reached out her hand, but Red didn’t break his run. In the next second he had shot across the street, heading for Horace’s house.
Sam and Ben ran to stop him, calling out his name, and trying to catch up to him before he reached the tape.
But neither of the men was a match for a dog wanting his home, and by the time they’d made their way up the walkway, Red had torn the yellow tape to shreds and was sitting on the front porch of his old house, his tail thumping on the wood.
“Hi, sweet Red,” Izzy said, walking slowly up to her dog, holding out her hand for him to sniff.
Sam and Ben looked through the window. The house was small and the police probably had done what needed to be done. A large lock was on the door. Horace had never had one of his own, and now that no one lived there and the inside was nearly empty, the house was locked up tighter than a drum. Murder, like life, had its ironies.
Red jumped off the porch and rummaged in the sandy yard, kicking up dirt and sniffing near a tuft of sea grass. A place where Horace had walked, perhaps, his scent still lingering in the yard. Or someone else’s scent, perhaps?
Izzy walked over to scratch his head, then bent low where he’d pushed aside his own water dish, then dug a hole. “It’s some kind of vial,” she said.
Ben looked down, pulled a tissue from his pocket, and picked it up.
The label had been peeled away, but a small patch of it still remained.
He slipped it into his pocket. “I’ll drop it off with Jerry. It could be the missing morphine container.”
“Or an old prescription of Horace’s,” Izzy said.
“Or nothing at all,” Nell said.
Ben looked over at Red.
If only the gentle golden dog could talk.