“He’s fine, Mrs. Palmer. He asked me to come out here and tell you he’s all right. He’ll be back as soon as he can.” He saw the look of bewilderment on Rebecca’s face and decided he’d better explain things. Fast. “There was an accident. We still don’t know exactly what happened,” he began, but Rebecca cut him off.
“An accident?” she said dazedly. “What kind of accident? Was it that fire? I saw a fire out in the water. Was that it?”
Chip nodded. “That’s it. A boat that was tied up in the harbor for the night wound up on the rocks in the mouth of the harbor. It blew up.”
“My God,” Rebecca breathed. “Was anyone hurt?”
“Someone may have been on the boat. We don’t know for sure yet. Anyway, when I got to the wharf Glen was already there. He saw as much of what happened as anybody. So Whalen asked him to stick around for a while.” Chip saw no point in telling Rebecca that her husband had been ordered to stay at the scene, not invited.
“Thank God,” Rebecca sighed. “You don’t have any idea of how worried I was. He should have been back, and then I saw those awful explosions, and—” she stopped talking when she saw the expression on Chip’s face.
“You mean he wasn’t here when the explosions happened?” he asked.
“No, of course not,” Rebecca said. “Didn’t he tell you?”
“He didn’t tell me much of anything,” Chip replied. “Where was he?”
“He’d gone down the beach to check on the old house — the one the Randalls are going to move into. Missy — our daughter — thought there was someone in the house this afternoon, so Glen went down to check on it. He must have seen the explosions from there and gone to the wharf.”
“How long was he gone? Before the explosions, I mean?”
“I’m not sure,” Rebecca began. Then she realized what Chip was getting at. “My God, you don’t think Glen had anything to do with those explosions, do you?”
“Of course not,” Chip said immediately. “But I want you to tell me exactly what happened.” He got out a notebook and a pencil, then saw the look of fear in Rebecca’s eyes, the same fear he had seen in Glen’s eyes earlier. He smiled at her reassuringly. “Mrs. Palmer, you don’t have to answer any of my questions if you don’t want to. But I hope you will. I want to put down in this notebook, right now, everything you can remember about what you and Glen talked about, why he went out, what time he went out — everything. I’m absolutely sure that everything you tell me will match up exactly with what Glen tells Harn Whalen. And then I’ll be able to back him up, because I’ll have the same story from you before you and Glen could possibly have talked to each other.”
Rebecca turned it over in her mind and tried to figure out what Glen would want her to do. She remembered Glen talking about this man, telling her he’d spent most of the day helping him — helping
His eyes were clear.
“My name’s Rebecca,” she said softly. “Glen told me about what you did today. I want to thank you.”
Chip flushed and kept his eyes on the pad. “It’s okay,” he said. “I had a good time doing it.” Then he looked up at her. “What about the questions? Will you answer them?”
“Of course,” Rebecca said. “Where shall we start?”
The third beer was sitting untouched in front of Glen when Harney Whalen stepped through the door to the bar and called him.
“Palmer, you want to come in here now?”
Glen slid off his stool, and went into the lobby. Dr. Phelps had left, after concluding that Jeff Horton was suffering from a mild case of shock that would pass before morning. The doctor had assured Whalen that there was nothing about the young fisherman’s condition that would make it inadvisable for Harn to question him, and Whalen was in the final stages of doing just that. As Glen appeared in the lobby he looked up.
“I want you and Horton here to come down to the station. We might just as well fill out the official reports tonight, while everything’s still fresh in your memories.”
Glen grinned wryly, and said, “I’m not sure anything’s still fresh in my memory. I’ve been drinking beer for almost an hour.” Then he glanced around the room and his grin faded. “Where’s Connor?”
“He hasn’t come back yet,” Whalen informed him. “You ready?”
Glen shrugged, as if to imply that he had no choice, then followed Jeff Horton and Harn Whalen to Whalen’s black-and-white. Minutes later they were in the police station.
“Okay, Palmer,” Whalen said without preamble, “let’s have it.”
“Have what?” Glen asked. “I’m afraid you’ve kept me around all night for nothing. I don’t have any idea what happened.”
“Maybe you’d like to tell me about how you happened to be on the wharf?”
“I saw the explosions and ran to the harbor. Then I saw this fellow at the end of the dock. I went out to see if he needed any help. That’s all there was to it.”
Whalen studied him through narrowed eyes for a few seconds. “You sure must run fast. The wharf’s a long way from your house.”
“I wasn’t at home,” Glen said, offering no more information.
“Why don’t you tell me Just where you were?” Whalen growled.
“Actually I was in your house, at the other end of Sod Beach from mine. From there it isn’t very far to the wharf. Just around the point, across the rocky beach and the sandbar.”
Whalen’s fingers drummed on the desk. He seemed to be turning something over in his mind.
“How did you happen to be the only one who went out on the wharf? Merle and Chip were both outside, but they didn’t go out on the dock.”
“They probably didn’t see any reason to go. From where they were standing they wouldn’t have been able to see Jeff. I only saw him because he happened to be between me and the fire. If I hadn’t, I would have gone to the inn. But I saw him, so I went out on the wharf.”
“What the hell were you doing in my house?” Whalen said suddenly, changing the subject of the conversation so violently that for a second Glen drew a blank. Then he recovered himself.
“You might say I was doing you a favor,” he said, controlling his anger. Who the hell did Whalen think he was? “My daughter thought someone was in the house this afternoon, and I thought I ought to check up. Or don’t you care who goes in and out of your own property?”
“What I care about or don’t care about is my own damned business, mister. Understand? Next time you think someone might have been in that house you tell me about it. Don’t go snooping around on your own.”
Glen felt his fury almost choking him but he held it back. “Fine,” he said tightly. “But in case you’re interested, which apparently you’re not, someone was in that house today. And he hadn’t been gone long when I arrived. There was a fire still burning in the fireplace. It had been banked, but not for long.”
“You’re right,” Whalen said easily. “I was in the house this afternoon.” Then he jerked a thumb at Jeff Horton. “You ever see him before tonight?”
“No.”
“What about you, Horton? You ever see this guy before?”
“I already told you, Chief, I’ve never seen anybody around here before tonight. Not you, not him, not anybody. Now, for God’s sake, aren’t you going to do anything about my brother?”
“And I’ve already told you,” Whalen mimicked him, “there’s nothing we can do about your brother. If he was on that boat he died when it blew. If he went overboard he didn’t last more than twenty minutes in the water. In ten minutes a man passes out, out there. In ten more minutes he’s dead. So you’d better hope that your brother was never on that boat. And that seems pretty unlikely, since you claim the boat was headed directly for the rocks.”
“What the hell are you saying?” Jeff cried.
“I’m saying that unless one of you two is lying, it looks to me like your brother got on that boat and deliberately piled himself up.”
“That’s a fucking lie!” Jeff yelled. “He was securing the boat for the night. Max would never do anything like that. Never!”
A slow smile came over Whalen’s face. “What are you saying then? That someone killed him? Cut the boat
