past the church. “New England seafood,” he said. “That sounds fine. You want to give Claire the directions?”
“I’d be very happy to.”
7
It was still a couple of hours before sunset, and Claire wanted to walk outside a while, to work off the stiffness of the long car ride. They stepped out the front door, and a young guy was just bouncing up onto the porch. “Hi,” he said, and they nodded and would have passed him but he stopped, frowned, pointed at them, and said, “I didn’t talk with you folks, did I?”
“No,” Claire said.
“Well, let me—” He was patting himself all over, frisking himself for something, while he talked, a kind of distracted smile on his face. He looked to be in his early twenties, with thick windblown brown hair, a round expectant face, and large black-framed glasses that made him look like an owl. A friendly owl. He wore a dark gray car coat with a cell phone dangling in front of it from a black leather strap around his neck, and jeans and boots, and it was the car coat he searched as he said, “I’m not a nut or anything, I wanna show you my bona fides, I’ve got my card here somewh— Oh, here it is.” And from an interior pocket he plucked a business card, which he handed to Claire.
The card was pale yellow, with maroon letters centered, reading
TERRY MULCANY
laureled with phone, fax and cell phone numbers, plus an e-mail address. There was no terrestrial address.
Claire said, “It doesn’t say who you’re a journalist for.”
“I’m freelance,” Mulcany said, smiling nervously, apparently not sure they’d be impressed by his status. “I specialize in true crime. No, keep it,” he said, as Claire was about to hand the card back. “I’ve got boxes of them.” The grin semaphored and he said, “I lose them all the time, and then I find them.”
“That’s nice,” Claire said. “Excuse me, we were just—”
“Oh, no, I don’t want to take up your time,” Mulcany said. “I just— You heard about the robbery, here last week.”
“Mrs. Bartlett just told us all about it.”
“Oh, is that her name, the lady here?”
Claire bent to him. “You aren’t staying here?”
“Oh, no, I can’t afford this place,” and the smile flickered some more. “Not until my advance comes in. I’ve got a deal with Spotlight to do a book on the robbery, so I’m just here getting the background, taking some pictures.”
“Well, I’m sorry, we can’t help,” Claire told him. “We just heard about the robbery ourselves half an hour ago.”
“That’s fine, I don’t expect—” Mulcany interrupted himself a lot, now saying, “You’re here for the foliage, aren’t you?”
Claire nodded. “Of course.”
“So you’ll be out, driving around, walking around,” Mulcany said. “If you see anything, anything at all, anything that seems a little weird, out of the ordinary, let me know. Call me on my cell,” he said, holding it up for them to look at. “If you find me something and I use it,” he said, grinning in full, letting the cell phone drop to his coat front again, “I’ll give you the credit, and I’ll put you in the index!”
“Well, I don’t know what we might see,” Claire told him, “but that’s a tempting offer. I’ll keep your card.”
“Great.” He was suddenly in a hurry to move on. “And I gotta check a couple details with— What was her name again?”
“Mrs. Bartlett. Like the pear.”
“Oh, great,” Mulcany said. “That I can remember. Thanks a lot!” And he hurried into Bosky Rounds.
Claire laughed as she and Parker started away from the B and B and down the town road with its wide dirt strip instead of a sidewalk. “Isn’t that nice?” she said. “You lost money on that expedition, but he’s going to make some. So it’s working out for somebody, after all.”
“I don’t like him being here,” Parker said.
“Oh, he’s harmless,” she said.
Parker shook his head. “On some wall,” he said, “that guy’s got those wanted posters tacked up. This time, he looked at you. Next time, maybe he looks at me.”
8
As they drove toward their New England seafood dinner, Parker said, “Nick’s the one found the church. It’s abandoned for years, off on a side road. The original idea was, we’d spend the first night there, split up the cash, head out in the morning. But the law presence was so intense we couldn’t move, and we couldn’t take the cash with us. So we left it there.”
“In the church.”
“We’ll be going by it in a few minutes.”
“I won’t see much in the dark.”
“I don’t want you to even slow down,” Parker told her. “The story the law is giving out is that Nick escaped before he could tell them anything, but they don’t always tell the truth, you know.”
“You think they might know the money’s there, in the church?”
“And they might have it staked out, waiting for us to come back. So we’ll just drive by. In daylight, I’ll try to get a better look at it.”
They kept driving, on dark, small, thinly populated roads, until he said, “It’s on the right.”
A small white church crouched in darkness, with parking around it. Claire looked at it as she drove by and said, “I don’t see anybody.”
“You wouldn’t.”
* * *
They passed the church again on their way back from the not-bad seafood dinner, and still didn’t see any sign of anybody in or near the place. But then they walked into Bosky Rounds and there in the communal parlor they did see somebody they knew: Susan Loscalzo.
She got to her feet with a big smile when they walked in, tossing
9
There were five guest rooms at Bosky Rounds, and with Sandra’s arrival late this afternoon all five were occupied. Now, in another corner of the communal parlor, two couples murmured together, planning their itinerary for tomorrow. Glancing toward them, ignoring the fact that Parker and Claire hadn’t said anything to her greeting, Sandra said, “I saw a bar on the way here looking like it had possibilities. Want to check it out?”
“Sure,” Parker said, and to Claire he said, “You want to come along?”
