the sea and the shore, while walking one day on Little Hay Beach, about two miles from Hammock.
“Might’ve, ayuh,” Vince agreed. He looked at her, his eyes twinkling in their deep sockets. “Want to know the two things I remember best about her the morning after her appointment with Cathcart over in Tinnock?”
“Sure.”
“Howrested she looked. And how well she ate when we sat down to breakfast.”
“That’s a fact,” Dave agreed. “There’s that old sayin about how the condemned man ate a hearty meal, but I’ve got an idea that no one eats so hearty as the man—or the woman—who’s finally been up and pardoned. And in a way she had been. She might not have known why he came to our part of the world, or what befell him once he got here, and I think she realized she might not ever know—”
“She did,” Vince agreed. “She said so when I drove her back to the airport.”
“—but she knew the only important thing: he was dead. Her heart might have been telling her that all along, but her head needed proof to go along for the ride.”
“Not to mention in order to convince that pesky insurance company,” Dave said.
“Did she ever get the money?” Stephanie asked.
Dave smiled. “Yes, ma’am. They dragged their feet some—those boys have a tendency to go fast when they’re putting on the sell-job and then slow down when someone puts in a claim—but finally they paid. We got a letter to that effect, thanking us for all our hard work. She said that without us, she’d still be wondering and the insurance company would still be claiming that James Cogan could be alive in Brooklyn or Tangiers.”
“What kind of questions did she ask?”
“The ones you’d expect,” Vince said. “First thing she wanted to know was where he went when he got off the ferry. We couldn’t tell her. We asked questions—didn’t we, Dave?”
Dave Bowie nodded.
“But no one remembered seein him,” Vince continued. “Accourse it would have been almost full dark by then, so there’s no real reason why anyone should have. As for the few other passengers—and at that time of year there aren’t many, especially on the last ferry of the day—they would have gone right to their cars in the Bay Street parkin lot, heads down in their collars because of the wind off the reach.”
“And she asked about his wallet,” Dave said. “All we could tell her was that no one ever found it…at least no one who ever turned it in to the police. I suppose it’s possible someone could have picked it out of his pocket on the ferry, stripped the cash out of it, then dropped it overside.”
“It’s possible that heaven’s a rodeo, too, but not likely,” Vince said drily. “If he had cash in his wallet, why did he have more—seventeen dollars in paper money—in his pants pocket?”
“Just in case,” Stephanie said.
“Maybe,” Vince said, “but it doesn’t feel right to me. And frankly, I find the idea of a pickpocket workin the six o’clock ferry between Tinnock and Moosie a touch more unbelievable than a commercial artist from a Denver advertising agency charterin a jet to fly to New England.”
“In any case, we couldn’t tell her where his wallet went,” Dave said, “or where his topcoat and suit-jacket went, or why he was found sittin out there on a stretch of beach in nothin but his pants and shirt.”
“The cigarettes?” Stephanie asked. “I bet she was curious about those.”
Vince barked a laugh. “Curious isn’t the right word. That pack of smokes drove her almost crazy. She couldn’t understand why he’d have had cigarettes on him. And we didn’t need her to tell us he wasn’t the kind who’d stopped for awhile and then decided to take the habit up again. Cathcart took a good look at his lungs during the autopsy, for reasons I’m sure you’ll understand—”
“He wanted to make sure he hadn’t drowned after all?” Stephanie asked.
“That’s right,” Vince said. “If Dr. Cathcart had found water in the lungs beneath that chunk of meat, it would have suggested someone trying to cover up the way Mr. Cogan actually died. And while that wouldn’t have proved murder, it would’ve suggested it. Cathcartdidn’t find water in Cogan’s lungs, and he didn’t find any evidence of smoking, either. Nice and pink down there, he said. Yet someplace between Cogan’s office building and Stapleton Airport, and in spite of the tearing hurry he had to’ve been in, he must’ve had his driver stop so he could pick up a pack. Either that or he had em put by already, which is what I tend to believe. Maybe with his Russian coin.”
“Did you tell her that?” Stephanie asked.
“No,” Vince said, and just then the telephone rang. “’Scuse me,” he said, and went to answer it.
He spoke briefly, saidAyuh a time or three, then returned, stretching his back some more as he did. “That was Ellen Dunwoodie,” he said. “She’s ready to talk about the great trauma she’s been through, snappin off that fire hydrant and ‘makin a spectacle of herself.’ That’s an exact quote, although I don’t think it will appear in my pulse- poundin account of the event. In any case, I think I’d better amble over there pretty soon; get the story while her recollection’s clear and before she decides to make supper. I’m lucky she n her sister eat late. Otherwise I’d be out of luck.”
“And I’vegot to get after those invoices,” Dave said. “Seems like there must be a dozen more than there were when we left for the Gull. I swan to goodness when you leave em alone atop a desk, they breed.”
Stephanie gazed at them with real alarm. “You can’t stop now. You can’t just leave me hanging.”
“No other choice,” Vince said mildly. “We’ve been hanging, Steffi, and for twenty-five years now. There isn’t any jilted church secretary in this one.”
“No Ellsworth city lights reflected on the clouds downeast, either,” Dave said. “Not even a Teodore Riponeaux in the picture, some poor old sailorman murdered for hypothetical pirate treasure and then left to die on the foredeck in his own blood after all his shipmates had been tossed overside—and why? As a warning to other would-be treasure-hunters, by gorry! Nowthere’s a through-line for you, dearheart!”
Dave grinned…but then the grin faded. “Nothing like that in the case of the Colorado Kid; no string for the beads, don’t you see, and no Sherlock Holmes or Ellery Queen to string em in any case. Just a couple of guys running a newspaper with about a hundred stories a week to cover. None of em drawin much water by BostonGlobe standards, but stuff people on the island like to read about, all the same. Speakin of which, weren’t you going to talk with Sam Gernerd? Find out all the details on his famous Hayride, Dance, and Picnic?”
“I was…I am…and Iwant to! Do you guys understand that? That I actuallywant to talk to him about that dumb thing?”
Vince Teague burst out laughing, and Dave joined him.
“Ayuh,” Vince said, when he could talk again. “Dunno what the head of your journalism department would make of it, Steffi, he’d probably break down n cry, but I know you do.” He glanced at Dave.
“We know you do.”
“And I know you’ve got your own fish to fry, but you must havesome ideas…sometheories …after all these years…” She looked at them plaintively. “I mean…don’t you?”
They glanced at each other and again she felt that telepathy flow between them, but this time she had no sense of the thought it carried. Then Dave looked back at her. “What is it you really want to know, Stephanie? Tell us.”
18
“Do you think he was murdered?”That was what she really wanted to know. They had asked her to set the idea aside, and she had, but now the discussion of the Colorado Kid was almost over, and she thought they would allow her to put the subject back on the table.
“Why would you think that any more likely than accidental death, given everything we’ve told you?” Dave asked. He sounded genuinely curious.
“Because of the cigarettes. The cigarettes almost had to have been deliberate on his part. He just never thought it would take a year and a half for someone to discover that Colorado stamp. Cogan believed a man found dead on a beach with no identification would rate more investigation than he got.”
“Yes,” Vince said. He spoke in a low voice but actually clenched a fist and shook it, like a fan who has just watched a ballplayer make a key play or deliver a clutch hit. “Good girl. Good job.”
Although just twenty-two, there were people Stephanie would have resented for calling her a girl. This ninety-year-old man with the thin white hair, narrow face, and piercing blue eyes was not one of them. In truth, she
