Murder On the Rocks (23 page)

Her little face scrunched up. “Monet? I had thought more the Dutch masters-you know, I strive for realism-but I guess I can see a touch of Monet.”

“Definitely. I mean, the play of color and light .. “I trailed off, remembering the grayish birdlike blobs, and decided to shift topics. “So, you’ll come for the retreat?”

“We’ll be up if we can. When you get it put together, please send us the information. I think we’ve both made great strides in our art, but there’s so much more to learn, isn’t there, dear?” Her husband looked up from his strawberry-covered waffle and grunted. I stayed to thank them again for coming and to make sure their arrangements with the mail boat were taken care of before returning to the kitchen.

Barbara and Ogden ate their breakfast simultaneously, but in silence, on opposite ends of the breakfast room. When I probed Barbara to find out what she’d been up to in Somesville, she just smiled and said, “You’ll find out soon enough.” I finally gave up.

It was just past 10:30 when I left Gwen to clean up the dishes and clambered onto my borrowed bicycle. Fifteen minutes later, the red touring bike rolled up outside of a large, cream-colored house with black shutters and a gleaming brick-red door. The pots of pansies and alyssum lining the porch had miraculously escaped the rampaging goats, and the breeze was tinged with the honey scent of the small white flowers as I rapped at the front door.

I was about to knock again when the door creaked open an inch, and Ingrid Sorenson’s blue eye peered out. “What do you want?”

“We need to talk, Ingrid.”

“About what?”

“About Bernard Katz.” She hesitated for a moment, then opened the door just enough for me to shuffle in sideways. I followed her into her tastefully decorated living room. The sofas were reupholstered Chippendale, and the room was crowded with expensive porcelain pieces crammed into nooks. Doilies decorated all of the dainty tables, and the smell of potpourri was overpowering.

Ingrid sat on the red velvet sofa. I selected a matching armchair across from her. My throat was dry-the bike I had borrowed didn’t have a spot for a water bottle-but Ingrid didn’t offer me anything, and I didn’t ask.

She crossed her legs, which were clad in crisp tan slacks, and rearranged her starched white blouse. Her short blond hair was neatly styled today, and she wore just enough makeup on her light skin to look polished. She looked as if she had just stepped out of Town and Country magazine; I half-expected her to pull on a tweed jacket. “What is it you wanted to ask me about?” she asked. Although her posture was one of studied casualness, her blue eyes darted around the room.

“How’s your son doing at Cornell, Ingrid?”

Her pale skin blanched beneath her dusting of rouge. “Fine,” she said quickly. “But I thought you wanted to talk to me about Bernard Katz.”

“Ingrid, why did you vote in favor of the resort?”

She swallowed, and uncrossed, then recrossed, her legs. “I felt it was in the best interest of the island.”

“You mean it didn’t have anything to do with your son’s recent arrest for drug dealing?”

She recoiled against the back of the sofa. When she spoke, her voice was as thin as wire. “Who told you that?”

I leaned forward. “I know Evan’s not at Cornell. You’ve been making trips three times a week to visit him at a treatment facility in Vermont.” Ingrid’s mouth quivered, and her eyes filled with fear. “I know that Bernard Katz was threatening to expose your son’s cocaine problem-and his arrest-if you didn’t vote for the resort.”

“It would have ruined his career. I couldn’t risk that. No mother could.” “

I wish I could believe that,” I said, “but it doesn’t make sense. I doubt your son would be applying for a job on Cranberry Island. Besides, any future employer could find out about his drug problem in a heartbeat, just with a simple background check.” I glanced around at the expensive knickknacks and the polished floor, and my eyes came to rest on Ingrid’s carefully made-up face. “I think you were more concerned about your own reputation on Cranberry Island than your son’s career opportunities.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about!” she spat. Her icy eyes were slits. “You’ve never had a child. You have no idea what it’s like when your child is in trouble.” I remembered the cold feeling in my stomach when I thought my niece might be lost at sea. How would I have felt if Gwen were my child? Ingrid was right. I didn’t know. I had an idea, but I didn’t know.

“Lots of kids get into trouble with drugs,” I said. “It’s a terrible tragedy. It can wreck lives. I just don’t think preserving your family’s reputation is worth destroying the island.”

“You’re just interested in keeping your inn afloat.” Ingrid’s voice was cold. “You have no interest in this island, or the people on it. You’ve been here what-three months now?-and you think you know what’s best for people who’ve been here for generations.” She looked at me with disdain. “You know nothing,” she hissed. “In fact, I wouldn’t be half surprised if you were the one who killed him. The only thing that surprises me is that you didn’t do it earlier.”

“Where were you the night Bernard Katz died?”

“Who are you, the police? You certainly aren’t very smart. Don’t you think if I wanted to kill Katz I’d have done it before the vote came up?”

I pounced on her words. “So you don’t think the resort is good for the island, either.”

Her eyes flickered. “I didn’t say that.”

“Maybe he was asking you for more than your vote. Did he hit you up for money, too?”

She wrapped her arms around her thin torso. “What-are you going to try and blackmail me, too?”

“So he did ask for money.”

“I don’t know why I even let you in the door.”

“How much did he want?”

“I’m not going to say another word to you. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have work to do.”

She stood up and strode to the front hall. I followed, and the red door was halfway shut behind me when I turned to face her. “I think what you did was wrong, Ingrid. But nobody will hear about your son from me.”

Relief flashed across her pale face, but her eyes were still hard as the door clicked shut behind me.

I had turned the bike’s front wheel toward the inn when on impulse I swung it around to face the bottom of Seal Point Road. As I studied the arrangement of the houses, a new thought occurred to me. Instead of heading up the hill toward home, I continued down the lane.

The sound of hammering echoed in Eleazer’s barn as my bike rolled up to the front porch at Eleazer and Claudette’s house. That was good-I wanted to talk to Claudette alone.

I had barely knocked when Claudette opened the door, a ball of wool tucked under her arm and a half-knitted scarf in her hands. Her lips twitched into a half smile when she saw me on the doorstep. “Hello, Natalie. What brings you out this direction?”

“Claudette, I have something to ask you.”

Her gray eyes grew guarded. “I guess you’d better come in, then.” Instead of heading toward the kitchen, I followed her bulky form into her small, formal living room. The slipcovered furniture was covered in knitted throws, and the smell of mothballs dominated the earthy smell of wool and previous meals from the nearby kitchen.

I sat down on a big floral armchair and leaned forward as Claudette settled herself on the couch across from me. The furniture creaked beneath her as she adjusted her bulk and her knitting needles began clacking away, adding another row to the mauve scarf she was working on.

I nodded out the window toward the barn in the back. “Is Eleazer working on a new boat out there?”

“Ayuh. Young Adam Thrackton’s boat’ll be in in a couple of days; he figures he’ll get this one finished up so he can take care of Adam’s in a hurry. So he won’t miss the season.”

“I know he’ll be glad to hear that. I’m surprised they were able to salvage the boat; I thought once they foundered, they were gone.”

“Oh, no,” she said. “The Diem ran aground, but she didn’t sink. Besides, sometimes they even tow them up from the bottom.” She fixed me with a canny look. “But I don’t imagine that’s what you came to ask me about, is it?”

“You’re right,” I said. I took a deep breath and plunged in. “I know you were out the night Bernard Katz died.”

She stared hard at the wad of mauve wool that was growing beneath her clacking needles. “What do you mean? I was at home the whole night.”

“Someone saw a flashlight coming down the lane. I know it came from your house or from Fernand’s studio; your houses are the only two down here. I also know you were out chasing your goats that night.” Her wide face was impassive. “Look. I’m not saying you killed Bernard Katz. I just want to know if you saw him, or saw anything unusual.”

She thrust her jaw out at me, knitting furiously. “What makes you think I was out chasing my goats the night he died?”

“Because,” I answered, “not long after the night Bernard Katz was killed, Eleazer mentioned that you’d been out chasing them down and had come home soaking wet”

(( ” So?

“Until the night of the storm, it hadn’t rained on Cranberry Island for at least two weeks.”

Claudette’s jaw wobbled for a moment. Then she slumped back into the sofa, her clacking needles suddenly stilled. “You won’t say anything, will you?”

“What did you see, Claudette?”

“I didn’t kill him, you know. I hated him, but I didn’t kill him.”

“What happened?” I pressed.

She thought for a moment before speaking. “Really, nothing. I didn’t see Bernard Katz at all, I don’t think. There was someone out on the cliff path, though. I never caught up with them-I was looking for Muffin-but I thought it was a strange place to be on a wet night.” She wrenched her mouth to the side. “And then when I found out what happened that night … well, I couldn’t very well say what I’d seen, could I? Not after what I said at the meeting.”

“Which way was this person headed?” I asked.

“Well, I only saw the flashlight,” she said. “But whoever it was was headed toward Cliffside.”

“Were they anywhere near where Bernard Katz died?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know. I’m not sure where he was killed. But the light was definitely closer to Cliffside than your inn.”

Had the person holding the flashlight stopped off at the cabin in the woods? “Did it go all the way to Cliffside? Or did it disappear somewhere along the way?”

“I’m afraid I wasn’t paying that much attention. I saw it a couple of times, but then it went away, and I didn’t think much of it, until I found out Bernard Katz had been killed.” I studied her broad face. Lines of worry creased the corners of her mouth and eyes, but her eyes were clear, and she met my gaze easily. I didn’t think she was hiding anything else.

“Do you think you know who did it?” she asked.

I sighed. “I have some ideas, but I still don’t know.”

“You won’t tell the police I was out that night, will you?”

“I won’t if I can avoid it. If it comes to it, though, I’ll leave it to you to tell them.” I looked at her solemn, careworn face for a moment. “By the way, have you given any more thought to contacting your son?”

She grimaced. “I have. I think about it all the time, actually.” Her voice was strained. “I just don’t know if it would be the right thing to do.”

I reached across the small coffee table that separated us and squeezed her doughy hand. “If there’s anything I can do to help, let me know,” I said. “Thank you for being honest with me today.”

“Do you think it will help? Knowing someone was on the path that night?”

“I don’t know.” A lone flashlight in the dark wasn’t what I had been hoping for. What I needed was a face. “You never know, though. It might.”

I pedaled home slowly, my eyes roaming over the green landscape, thinking about my conversation with Claudette. Despite her reputation as a battle-axe, I was beginning to like her; she had a tender side to her that was genuinely appealing. I hoped she got up the nerve to contact her son. Any kids would be lucky to have a grandma like Claudette.

I felt comfortable crossing Claudette off my list of suspects, but Ingrid was a different story. If Bernard Katz had blackmailed her for her vote and then followed up with a request for money, she might have decided he was better off dead than alive. I sighed. Would I ever narrow down the field enough to find the murderer? Stanley and Estelle were high on the list of potential suspects, but I couldn’t cross Barbara Eggleby off, either.

As the hill grew steeper, I wondered who had been on the cliff path the night Bernard Katz died. Had Bernard Katz gone to Cliffside and been killed on his way back to the inn? Or had he been going to Cliffside and been killed before he reached it? My legs pumped harder and my breath shortened as the bike hit the steepest part of the hill, but my mind still wrangled with the puzzle of Katz’s death. Why had he been out of the inn on a rocky path during a storm in the first place? The note that I had found in his room-same time, same place-floated into my mind. The only reason I could think of was a pre-planned secret meeting. Did someone know he was going to meet Estelle? Or had Estelle set up the meeting, and then killed him?

A whiff of roses floated up to me on the breeze as I crested the big hill and started descending toward the Gray Whale Inn, and my eyes were drawn to the beach roses that flanked the path to the cliffs. Maybe the light Claudette had seen on the path had been the killer returning home. Then again, just because the light had been headed toward Cliffside didn’t mean that Cliffside was its destination. I shook my head in frustration; I had been hoping Claudette could provide me with a little more detail than a flashlight glimpsed in the distance. Still, it was time to pay another visit to Estelle and Stanley.

I stowed the bike in the shed and walked around the side of the inn, bending down to pluck a few stray weeds from the flower beds along the way. Just before I turned the corner, a familiar voice floated to my ears. I froze mid-step.

“Based on those prints,” the voice drawled, “she spent a little more time in Mr. Katz’s room than she let on” The odor of stale tobacco mingled with the scent of roses on the breeze. It was Grimes, talking to somebody on my back porch. I sidestepped a trellis dripping with sweet peas and pressed myself against the rough shingles on the wall of the inn, cursing my luck. My plan had been to grab a quick bite to eat and head over to Cliffside. It appeared Grimes had other ideas.