The Mammoth Book of Best British Mysteries (33 page)

“Look, would you like to come in?” the young man said. “Have a cold drink or something. It’s a hot day.”

I looked at Mary Jane. I could tell from her expression that she was as uncertain as I was. Now that we were here, the reality was starting to dawn on us. These were the people the Preacher had
called the Spawn of Satan. As far as the townsfolk were concerned, they drugged young girls and had their evil way. But the young man looked harmless and it
was
a hot day. We were thirsty.
Finally, we sort of nodded and followed him inside the cabin.

The shade was pleasant and a gentle cross-breeze blew through the open shutters. Sunlight picked out shining strands of silver and gold in the materials that draped the furnishings. The
Newcomers didn’t have much, and most of it was makeshift, but we made ourselves comfortable on cushions on the floor and the young man brought us some lemonade. “Homemade,” he
said. “I’m sorry it’s not as cold as you’re probably used to, but we don’t have a refrigerator yet,” He laughed. “As a matter of fact, we’ve only
just got the old generator working, or we wouldn’t even have any music.” He nodded towards the drinks. “We keep some chilled in the stream out back.”

By this time the others had wandered in to get a look at us, most of them older than the young man, and several of them lovely women in bright dresses with flowers twined in their long hair.

“I’m Jared,” said the young man, then he introduced the others – Star, Leo, Gandalf, Dylan – names we were unfamiliar with. They sat cross-legged on the floor and
smiled. Jared asked us some questions about the town, and we explained how the people there were suspicious of strangers but were decent folks underneath it all. I wasn’t certain that was
true, but we weren’t there to say bad things about our kin. We didn’t tell them what lies the Preacher had been spreading.

Jared told us they had come here to get away from the suspicion, corruption and greed they had found in the cities, and they were going to live close to nature and meditate. Some of them were
artists and musicians – they had guitars and flutes – but they didn’t want to be famous or anything. They didn’t even want money from anyone. One of them – Rigel, I
think his name was – said mysteriously that the world was going to end soon and that this was the best place to be when it happened.

Someone rolled a funny cigarette, lit it and offered it to us, but I said no. I’d never smoked any kind of cigarette, and the thought of marijuana, which I assumed it was, terrified me. To
my horror, Mary Jane took it and inhaled. She told me later that it made her feel a bit light-headed, but that was all. I must admit, she didn’t act any differently from normal. At least not
that day. We left shortly after, promising to drop by again, and it was only over the next few weeks that I noticed Mary Jane’s behavior and appearance gradually start to change.

It was just little things at first, like a string of beads she bought at a junk shop in Logan. It was nothing much, really, just cheap colored glass, but it was something she
would have turned her nose up at a short while ago. Now, it replaced the lovely gold chain and heart pendant that her parents had given her for her fifteenth birthday. Next came the red cheesecloth
top with the silver sequins and fancy Indian embroidery, and the first Mad Hatters LP, the one with “her song” on it.

We went often to the island to see Jared and the others, and I soon began to sense something, some deeper connection, between Mary Jane and Jared and, quite frankly, it worried me. They started
wandering off together for hours, and sometimes she told me to go back home without her, that she’d catch a later ferry. It wasn’t that Mary Jane was naive or anything, or that I
didn’t trust Jared. I also knew that Mary Jane’s father was liberal, and she said he trusted her, but I still worried. The townsfolk were already getting a bit suspicious because of the
odd way she was dressing. Even Riley McCorkindale gave her strange looks in chapel. It didn’t take a genius to put two and two together. At the very least, if she wasn’t careful, she
could end up grounded for the rest of the summer.

Things came to a head after chapel one Sunday in August. The Preacher had delivered one of his most blistering sermons about what happens to those who turn away from the path of righteousness
and embrace evil, complete with a graphic description of the torments of hell. Afterwards, people were standing talking, as they do, all a little nervous, and Mary Jane actually said to the
Preacher that she didn’t believe there was a hell, that if God was good, he wouldn’t do such horrible things to people. The Preacher turned scarlet, and it was only the fact that Mary
Jane ran off and jumped on the ferry that stopped him taking her by the ear and dragging her back inside the chapel for special instruction whether she liked it or not. But he wouldn’t
forget. One way or another, there’d be hell to pay.

Or there would have been, except that was the evening they found Mary Jane’s body on the western beach of Pine Island.

The fisherman who found her said he first thought it was a bundle of clothes on the sand. Then, when he went to investigate, he realized that it was a young girl and sailed
back to Jasmine Cove as fast as he could. Soon, the police launch was heading out there, the parking lot was full of police cars and the sheriff had commandeered the ferry. Mr Kiernan was beside
himself, blaming himself for not keeping a closer eye on her. But it wasn’t his fault. He wasn’t as mean-spirited as the rest, and how could he know what would happen, anyway? By the
time it started to get dark, word was spreading around town that a girl’s body had been found, that it was the body of Mary Jane Kiernan and that she had been strangled.

I can’t really describe the shock I felt when I first heard the news. It was if my whole being went numb. I didn’t believe it at first, of course, but in a way I did. So many people
said it had happened that in the end I just had to believe it. Mary Jane was gone.

The next few days passed as in a dream. I remember only that the newspapers were full of stories about some huge gathering out east for folks like the Newcomers, at a place called Woodstock,
where it rained cats and dogs and everyone played in the mud. The police came around and questioned everybody, and I was among the first, being Mary Jane’s closest friend. The young
detective, Lonnegan was his name, seemed nice enough, and Mother offered him a glass of iced tea, which he accepted. His forehead and upper lip were covered by a thin film of sweat.

“Now then, little lady,” he began.

“My name’s Grace,” I corrected him. “I am not a little lady.”

I’ll give him his due, he took it in his stride. “Very well, Grace,” he said. “Mary Jane was your best friend. Is that right?”

“Yes,” I answered.

“Were you with her when she went to Pine Island last Wednesday?”

“No,” I said.

“Didn’t you usually go there together?”

“Sometimes. Not always.”

“Why did she go there? There’s not exactly a lot to see or do.”

I shrugged. “It’s peaceful. There’s a nice beach . . .” I couldn’t help myself, but as soon as I thought of the beach – it had been
our
beach –
the tears started to flow. Lonnegan paused while I reached for a tissue, dried my eyes and composed myself. “I’m sorry,” I went on. “It’s just a very beautiful place.
And there are all kinds of interesting sea birds.”

“Yes, but that’s not why Mary Jane went there, is it, for the sea birds?”

“Isn’t it? I don’t know.”

“Come on, Grace,” said Lonnegan, “we already know she was seeing a young man called David Garwell.”

David Garwell.
So that was Jared’s real name. “Why ask me, then?”

“Do you know if she had arranged to meet him that day? Last Wednesday?”

“I’m sure I don’t know,” I said. “Mary Jane didn’t confide in me about everything.” Maybe he did know that Mary Jane was “seeing” Jared, but
I wasn’t going to tell him that she had told me just two days before she died that she was in love with him, and that as soon as she turned sixteen she planned to go and live with him and the
others on Pine Island. That wouldn’t have gone down well at all with Detective Lonnegan. Besides, it was our secret.

Lonnegan looked uncomfortable and shuffled in his seat, then he dropped his bombshell. “Maybe she didn’t tell you that she was having a baby, Grace, huh? And we think it was his. Did
Mary Jane tell you she was having David Garwell’s baby?”

In the end, it didn’t matter what I thought or said. While the bedraggled crowds were heading home from Woodstock in the east, the police arrested Jared – David
Garwell – for the murder of Mary Jane Kiernan. They weren’t giving out a whole lot of details, but rumor had it that they had found Mary Jane’s gold pendant in a drawer in his
room.

“He did it, Grace, you know he did,” said Cathy Baker outside the drug store a few days later. “People like that . . . they’re . . . ugh!” She pulled a face and
made a gesture with her hands as if to sweep spiders off her chest. “They’re not like us.”

“But why would he hurt her?” I asked. “He loved her.”

“
Love
?” echoed Cathy. “They don’t know the meaning of the word.”

“They call it
free
love, you know,” Lynne Everett chirped in. “And that means they do it with anyone.”

“And everyone,” added Cathy.

I gave up. What was the point? They weren’t going to listen. I walked down Main Street with my head hung low and the sun beating on the back of my neck. It just didn’t make sense.
Mary Jane stopped wearing the pendant when she bought the cheap colored beads. Jared couldn’t have stolen it from her, even if he was capable of such a thing, unless he had broken into her
house on the mainland, which seemed very unlikely to me. And she hadn’t been wearing it on the day she died, I was certain of that. It made far more sense to assume that she had given it to
him as a token of her love.

The problem was that I hadn’t seen Jared or any of the others since the arrest, so I hadn’t been able to ask them what happened. The police had searched the cabins, of course, and
they said they found drugs, so they hauled everybody into the county jail and put the children in care.

I was so lost in thought that I didn’t even notice Detective Lonnegan walking beside me until he spoke my name and asked me if I wanted to go into Slater’s with him for a coffee.

“I’m not allowed to drink coffee,” told him, “but I’ll have a soda, if that’s all right.”

He said that was fine and we went inside and took a table. He waited a while before speaking, then he said, “Look, Grace, I know that this is all a terrible shock to you, that Mary Jane
was your best friend. I respect that, but if you know anything else that will help us in court against the man who killed her, I’d really be grateful if you’d tell me.”

“Why do you need me?” I asked. “I thought you knew everything. You’ve already put him in jail.”

“I know,” Lonnegan agreed. “And we’ve probably got enough to convict him, but every little helps. Did she say anything? Did you see anything?”

I told him how Jared couldn’t possibly have stolen the locket unless he went to the mainland.

Lonnegan smiled. “I don’t know how you know about that,” he said. “I suppose I shouldn’t underestimate small town gossip. We know she wasn’t wearing the
locket on the day she died, but we don’t know when he stole it.”

“He didn’t steal it! Jared’s not a thief.”

Lonnegan coughed. “I beg to differ, Grace,” he said. “David Garwell has a record that includes larceny and possession of dangerous drugs. He should have been in jail to start
with, but he skipped bail.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“That’s up to you. I could show you the evidence if you want to come to headquarters.”

“No, thank you.”

“It’s your choice.”

“But
why
would he hurt Mary Jane? He told her he loved her.”

Lonnegan’s ears pricked up. “He did?” He toyed with his coffee cup on the saucer. It still had an old lipstick stain around the rim. “We think they had an
argument,” he said. “Maybe Mary Jane discovered the theft of the pendant. Or perhaps she told Garwell that she was pregnant, and he wanted nothing further to do with her. Either way,
she ran off down to that cozy little beach the two of you liked so much. He followed her, maybe worried that she’d tell her parents, or the police. They fought, and he strangled
her.”

“But then he’d
know
for certain that the police would suspect him!”

“People ain’t always thinking straight when they’re mad, Grace.”

I shook my head. I know what he said made sense, but it
didn’t
make sense, if you see what I mean. I didn’t know what else to say.

“You’re going to have to accept it sooner or later, Grace,” Lonnegan said. “This Jared, as you call him, murdered your friend, and you’re probably the only one who
can help us make sure he pays for his crime.”

“But I can’t help you. Don’t you see? I still don’t believe Jared did it.”

Lonnegan sighed. “They had an argument. She walked off. He admits that much. He won’t tell us what it was about, but like I said, I think she confronted him over the gold pendant or
the pregnancy. He followed her.”

I squirmed in my seat, took a long sip of soda and asked, “Who else was on the island that day? Have you checked?”

“What do you mean?”

“You must have asked Mr Kiernan, Mary Jane’s father, who he took over and brought back that day. Was there anyone else who shouldn’t have been there? Have you questioned them
all, asked them for alibis?”

“No, but . . .”

“Don’t you think you ought to? Why can’t it be one of those people?”

“Like who?”

“The Preacher!” I blurted it out.

Lonnegan shook his head, looking puzzled. “The Preacher? Why?”

“Was he there? Was he on the ferry?”

“You know I can’t tell you that.”

“Well, you just ask him,” I said, standing up, “because Mary Jane told me she saw him touching Betsy Goodall somewhere he shouldn’t have been touching her.”

The Preacher was waiting for me after chapel the following Sunday. “Grace, a word in your ear,” he said, leading me by the arm. He was smiling and looked friendly
enough, in that well-scrubbed way of his, to fool anyone watching, including my parents, but his grip hurt. He took me back inside the dark chapel and sat me down in a corner, crowding me, his face
close to mine. I couldn’t smell bourbon on his breath – not that I would have known what it smelled like – but I could smell peppermint. “I had a visit from the police the
other day,” he said, “a most unwelcome visit, and I’ve been trying to figure out ever since who’s been telling tales out of school. I think it was you, Grace. You were her
friend. Thick as thieves, the two of you, always unnaturally close.”