Wicked Fix (39 page)

Even that wouldn't have worked, though, I saw as

I examined it more closely, except for one thing. The

pry-bar attack had been done energetically, but the

lock was designed precisely for that sort of criminal

assault. Paddy was no slouch at any security; he didn't

confine himself only to fire precautions.

His locks would have held. I didn't touch them but

I didn't need to. The door stood ajar, so the bolts of

both the cylinder lock and the deadbolt were clearly

visible.

Unless someone had unlocked it after it was jimmied,

the door hadn't been locked in the first place.

"Jesus H. Christ," Bob Arnold exhaled angrily.

"Is there some kind of drug has gotten

into the water around here? Making people

crazy?"

It was late, but Teddy kept the bar at La Sardina

open for us; we were all too wired up to go home. The

tail end of the storm had snapped around with a last

vicious twist, splattering the windows with bursts of

rain; huge swells rolled into the boat basin, the small

craft bobbing and straining uneasily at their mooring

lines.

"Did Paddy have anything to say?" Ellie asked.

Bob shrugged. "Thinks maybe Terence heard

someone breaking in, went to the stairs, yelled to

Paddy, someone caught him there."

"Weapon?" I inquired.

"Nah. Run outside, toss it over the seawall, end of

story. Time anyone finds it, it's all washed off. If anyone

does."

"Good trick, readin' with the lights out," George

Valentine observed neutrally. He'd heard the ambulance

siren and come down to see what might be the

matter.

"Yeah," Bob Arnold agreed. "Asked Paddy.

Changed his story a little. Now he says the two of

'em'd had a set-to, earlier. When that happened, sometimes

Terence'd just sleep downstairs."

He sighed, ate a pretzel from the bowl of them on

the shiny wooden bar surface. "But then he started

feelin' bad about it. Paddy did, I mean. Called downstairs,

no answer, got a flashlight and went down

lookin' for his buddy."

Wade's big arm rested on my shoulder and I was

glad to have it there; even with all that had happened

recently, the sight of Terence lying there helpless had

really thrown me.

"It could have been," Ellie said, "that someone

mistook him for Paddy, in the dark."

Wade and George glanced at each other. "Paddy,"

George said, and Wade nodded at him.

"What?" Bob Arnold demanded.

"We were all in what was left of Heywood Sondergard's

youth group," Wade said uncomfortably, "at

the end of it, just before Marcus and Heywood left

town. Mike, Willow, Paddy, and us." His hand took in

George and Ellie. "Little Boxy Thorogood hung

around too, for a while. Junior member. Till," Wade

added, "Boxy died."

"Yeah, so what?" Arnold said. "I know that." He

spied a pot of hours-old coffee on the hot plate, got up,

and poured a mug of it. He held the pot out to us,

noted our refusals, sampled some, and shuddered.

"You trying to tell me someone's knockin' off old

members of a church club? What, maybe they didn't

like any of the hymns you guys sang?"

He hoisted himself back onto the barstool. "Besides,

what about the other members? Why single you

out? For that matter, it ain't even all of you--unless

you three have been suffering from problems you

haven't reported."

They shook their heads. "And," he finished, taking

another handful of pretzels, "why now?"

George examined his fingernails. "Point is, Terence

wasn't part of it. He wasn't hooked up to Reuben in

any way."

Wesley Bodine wasn't, either, I thought, but Paddy

was. I kept quiet, though, so George would talk more.

"And I've been thinking," he went on. "We all gab

about how if you stood up to him, Reuben would back

off. Even Paddy, though he really didn't. But that

wasn't the whole story, only half."

He looked up. "The other half was, if you showed

you were scared of him, he would never quit. And even

after you stood up to him once, he would try again.

Just one more time."

"That's right," Ellie recalled. "He cornered me in

the back of Leighton's store after I'd beat him up."

George frowned. "You never told me that. What

did you do?"

Her smile was beatific. "I kneed him in the groin

just as hard as ever I could. Then I paid for my Popsicle,

stood outside eating it until he came out limping.

He didn't even look at me."

"Great," Arnold said flatly. "I'm impressed. You

three faced him down, he don't bother you anymore.

But Reuben, you might just want to remember, is dead.

He is not running around bothering anybody, anymore,

so what's going on now, this ain't Reuben's one

more time. Even though," he conceded reluctantly, "it

sure as hell does feel as if it is, doesn't it?"

He drank more terrible coffee, grimaced. "Just like

the bad old days."

It was an unpleasant echo of what Paddy Farrell

had said in La Sardina. "Who else was in the group?" I

asked. "In that last year, when all the worst things

happened? Paddy's dad, Boxy Thorogood and Deckie

Cobb, Mrs. Sondergard ..."

Silence. I waited for them to remember. But after a

moment I realized: the silence was my answer.

"No one," Ellie said finally. "The other kids just

kind of dropped away. We would have too, eventually.

And then Marcus and Heywood left town, of course.

But even before that, it wasn't fun anymore."

She looked into the mirror behind the bar. "In a

way, Reuben killed that, too. And there wasn't even

anything to bury."

George got up decisively. "Come on, kiddo. Long

day. I want to be shut of it."

Wade left some money on the bar, called to Ted in

the kitchen as we went out, to let him know he could

lock up. "Paddy going to be all right, up in Calais?" he

asked Bob Arnold.

At the hospital, he meant. Paddy had gone in the

ambulance with Terence.

"Yeah," Arnold said, heading across the street to

where his squad car was parked. The rain had stopped,

and puddles stood gleamingly under the yellow streetlights.

A few stars had shown up, poking tentatively

between the streaming clouds.

Bob straightened tiredly. "They didn't know, Terence,

if he is going to make it or not. I think they're

going to LifeStar him out of there. Said they'd keep me

posted. Paddy wouldn't leave."

A thump of regret hit me: If Victor's trauma center

were operating now, they wouldn't have to LifeStar

Terence anywhere. Whoever was doing all this wasn't

only killing people right this minute; next year some

little kid would fall off a skateboard, or a logger would

get creamed by a shifting load, or the boom would

swing suddenly on a sailboat.

And instead of prompt surgery within the first

hour--the golden hour, as Victor always called it--the

victim would get a helicopter ride to Portland or wherever.

Better than nothing, of course.

But a long way from ideal. That was the gap my

goofball ex-husband had wanted to close. And crazy as

he was in every other way but that one, he could have

done it.

George and Ellie got into the Jeep together; I rode

home in the pickup with Wade. "Arnold asks good

questions," I said as he downshifted for the Key Street

hill.

"Yeah. How come others from the group, and not

the three of us. And why now? Although the answer to

that last one's pretty clear," he added, turning into the

driveway. "It's someone from away who's doing it,

someone who's in town for the festival."

"Or," I suggested, "someone who wants it to look

that way."

His shoulders slumped. "Huh. Yeah, that too,

maybe."

Half a block away, Victor's house looked dark and

forlorn. A branch had blown down onto the porch

roof, crumpling a section of gutter, and wet leaves were

plastered to the pristine white siding like dirty handprints.

"And that door was open," I said. "It couldn't

have been broken in, those locks were good ones, and

there was no need for it to be. Unless someone already

inside wanted it to look that way too."

"In that case, why not lock it after you broke it?"

Wade inquired reasonably.

I put my hands to my head. "I don't know."

"My question doesn't have anything to do with

any of that, though," Wade went on, shutting off the

engine. Sometime during the day, he'd found time to

haul in all those storm windows.

"What I want to know," he demanded of the dripping

darkness, "is why? What Reuben started should

have died with him. But it's not." We got out, crossed

the sodden grass to the back porch. In the hallway,

Monday's toenails clicked welcomingly.

"Because," Wade went on, "whoever did for Reuben,

that's one thing. I'm not condoning it, but I understand

it."

He unlocked the back door, and I realized with a

sad little thump of startlement that he must have

locked it, even though Sam was home: another evidence

of Reuben's legacy of fear.

"So?" In the kitchen, a wave of tiredness washed

over me and I sank into a chair.

"So you'd think if someone wanted to go on doing

bad deeds, they'd do them to other bad guys like Reuben.

If," he added, "you could find any. Instead, someone's

targeting his victims. Almost as if they are

finishing the business he can't finish himself."

I looked at him. "You're brilliant."

"But not brilliant enough." He peered into the refrigerator,

closed it again. "What's the good of that?"

I got up. "It's the link. What they all have in common

--not only that they were in Sondergard's group.

They were victims in the group--even Heywood, if you

think being blackmailed and having your wife murdered

makes you a victim, which I do. Maybe even

Weasel, if he's connected to the group in some way we