Murder On the Rocks (24 page)

As I flattened myself against the wall and contemplated an exit strategy, Grimes’ gravelly voice continued. “You know, I’m not sure there was any intruder at all. I told her I needed her to be here today. If I can track her down, I’m tempted to take her down to the station this afternoon.”

“WHY WOULD YOU TAKE Natalie in?” The mild voice was John’s.

“I told you, her prints were all over that room. She had the motive, she had the means, she had the opportunity-heck, she found the stiff herself. Got stuck on that cliff trying to conceal evidence, if you ask me.”

“If she were going to kill him, don’t you think she would have done it before the Board of Selectmen voted?” John asked. Thank you, thank you, thank you, I breathed silently.

“I’m guessing it was a crime of passion,” Grimes responded. “Miss Barnes strikes me as a pretty passionate woman.”

“I’d agree with passionate. She’s not stupid, though. And what about Estelle, and that business with the will? She could very well have thought Bernard Katz had already signed the new version, and that everything was coming to her. Or Stanley-he was being cuckolded by his own father, for God’s sake. Besides, he’s the one in line to inherit.”

“Estelle? That young lady? She couldn’t hurt a fly. And her husband’s a pansy. No, my gut says it’s the lady innkeeper. And I’ve got the evidence to back it up”

“Weren’t there other prints in Katz’s room? Prints that haven’t been identified?”

“Yeah, but you know how inns work-there are always people in and out of those rooms. Could be from a previous tenant”

“Or from the innkeeper who takes care of the rooms,” John said drily. I cheered him on silently from my post at the side of the inn. “Don’t you think it would be a good idea to get a few more islanders’ prints? Surely lots of folks weren’t too happy about the big resort coming in. And the issue of the intruder was never really cleared up, was it?”

Grimes sighed. “Mr. Quinton, I know you’re the island deputy, but don’t interfere with the workings of the real police. This is a homicide investigation. We’ve seen it all. We know what we’re doing.”

I still think there are more angles that need to be examined.”

“Are you sweet on your landlord, or something?”

“It’s just that the investigation doesn’t seem as … as thorough as I would have liked to see. As I would have expected to see.”

“You got a problem with it? Call my boss. He’ll set you straight. Anyway, I’m going to stick around here for a while, see if Miss Barnes shows up. If you see her, let her know I’m looking for her.” “

“Aye aye, captain.” Sarcasm tinged John’s voice.

“And if you like being deputy, I’d recommend you shut your trap”

I heard the sounds of footsteps receding. Apparently the interview was over. My throat tightened. Grimes really had pegged me as the murderer. At least John had stood up for me.

Panic began to well in my chest, and I struggled to regulate my breathing. How was I going to run the inn if Grimes detained me on the mainland? Gwen was helpful, but she couldn’t take over the whole operation. And if I was tried and found guilty … I shivered, wondering how Maine dealt with capital murder cases, then dismissed the thought from my mind. It was time to find out who the murderer was. Fear would accomplish nothing; the most important thing was to use every minute of my remaining time as a free woman.

I crept around the side of the inn and hurried past the front, crouching down to avoid being spotted from the windows. It was now or never. I picked my way over toward the cliff path and headed up the rocky slope toward Cliffside.

Despite my dark state of mind, it was a beautiful day-the sun was high in the now-cloudless blue sky, and the cobalt water was frisky in the strong breeze. The aroma of the beach roses intensified as I navigated the path, ducking past the thorny branches.

As I threaded through rocks and clumps of blueberries, my thoughts turned to Estelle and Stanley Katz. Estelle might not want to see me, but I had a few questions to ask her about Bernard Katz’s will-and about the little cabin I was increasingly convinced she had visited the day we met on the path.

Estelle had a strong motive-Katz’s money, direct, not filtered through Stanley. According to John, a woman would have had the strength to commit the murder, and although Estelle was small, she kept herself in good shape. I thought of the letter in Katz’s room from Ess, it had said. Could the promise of a tryst with a beautiful woman have lured Bernard Katz out into the storm?

I remembered Stanley’s shocked reaction when he learned his father had been murdered. Had he been shocked because he realized his wife had committed murder? Then again, Fernand had suggested there was no love lost between Stanley and Estelle. Still, regardless of how you felt about your spouse, it would be a shock to discover that the person you lived with was a murderer. Of your own father, to boot.

At the break in the undergrowth that marked the path to the old camp, I decided to check out the cabin one more time. I pushed through the low-hanging branches and climbed over a fallen tree. Maybe I had missed something the first time through. Something that would link the cabin to Estelle, or at least to Bernard Katz.

At first glance, the cabin looked exactly the same as it had yesterday. On closer inspection, however, the door seemed farther ajar. Yesterday, only an inch or two remained between the door and the frame; now the distance approached half a foot.

The undergrowth shielded me as I squatted down where I stood, listening. If whoever had come to the cabin was still here, it would be good to know about it while escape was still possible. A long moment passed, and nothing stirred but the calls of seagulls and terns and the wind through the tops of the tall spruce trees.

I crept closer, trying to move as quietly as possible. My heart hammered at my ribcage as I tiptoed into the clearing and approached the nearest window, scuttling over crablike and crouching beneath it. I braced myself and peered over the rough windowsill.

The cabin was empty.

The blankets, the lantern, even the dishtowel curtains-everything was gone. I moved around the cabin to the front door. The rough wood scraped my stomach as I sidled through the narrow gap into the cabin. Somebody had cleared the place during the last twenty-four hours, even down to the broom that had stood in the corner. I walked around the cabin with a mounting sense of frustration. All that remained was the old chest the lantern had stood on. The comic books still moldered beneath the rotting lid, but everything else had disappeared.

I circled the cabin’s interior several times, searching for a clue that would tell me who had cleared the place out. Outside the cabin, my search for footprints was in vain; any mark was lost in the heavy carpet of pine needles.

I walked around the cabin again and again, pushing aside the fallen branches and needles with my feet, hoping to find something someone had dropped. My search yielded nothing. After one last pass, I admitted defeat and turned back toward the narrow path.

Why had someone cleared out the cabin? Had Estelle been startled by my presence on the path, and decided to remove all evidence that the cabin had been in use, just in case? My arm shielded my face from prickly branches as I trudged back up toward the cliffs. I had a long list of questions for Estelle.

When the narrow trail rejoined the cliff path, I turned left and headed toward Cliffside, pausing briefly at the sight of the few terns that had survived the disruption of their homes. As they wheeled in the sunlight, unaware of the doom that had been pronounced on the home they had inhabited for centuries, I was sickened to realize what one man could do to the lives of so many others. The fabric of Cranberry Island, which had been woven for centuries, would be rent irreparably by Bernard Katz’s desire to make the island his next conquest. My own life would suffer as well; in fact, it already had.

I gazed at the terns for a long time before continuing up the path toward Cliffside, wondering how many more times I would take this high, narrow road before the bulldozers flattened it. My eyes turned from the sky to the rocky path in front of me as I walked. One of the lumps of granite was smeared with red. I bent down instinctively to touch it, raising my fingers to my nose, and the brief whiff of copper sent a current of fear through my body. It was blood.

I jerked my hand away from my face. My heart thundered in my chest as I wheeled around. Think, Nat, think. A few branches had snapped off the low-growing bushes nearby, and the ground was scuffed, as if a struggle had taken place. My eyes avoided the red smear on the rock as I debated what to do next, fear prickling my skin. The options were to head back to the inn and get John, or to stay and look for the person who had been injured.

If Grimes weren’t sitting at the inn, like a fat spider waiting to catch a fly, I would have run back to fetch John. Instead, I stood frozen with my arms wrapped around my body, weighing my options. Searching for the person whose blood I had found could lead me not just to the injured person, but to whoever had inflicted the wound. The murderer, my mind whispered, and a tremor of fear coursed through me. On the other hand, returning to the inn meant delivering myself to Grimes.

I decided to risk going it alone. I walked farther up the path, scanning the underbrush and calling out in a loud voice, hoping that if whoever had been hurt was capable of speech, they’d re spond. My eyes strained to catch movement, peering into the bushes lining the path and darting between the tall pines and spruce. I combed the woods with my eyes, expecting a murderer to leap out at me at any moment, but saw nothing, and heard only the low moan of the wind over the craggy rocks and the calls of the wheeling birds. After twenty minutes of calling and poking into the undergrowth, I abandoned the search.

As I traipsed back to the spot where I had found the blood, a sick feeling welled in my stomach, and my eyes crept to the edge of the cliff. If someone was hurt down there, it was important to get help. I steeled myself, took a deep breath and sidled over to the lip of the cliff.

When I saw what lay below, my stomach lurched. I stepped back and closed my eyes, swallowing back the bile in my throat. I couldn’t bring myself to look a second time, but I didn’t need to; the image was seared on the backs of my eyelids. On the rocks, about ten feet down, Estelle Katz lay sprawled like a broken Barbie doll, a trickle of blood leaking from a red matted gash on her pouf of blonde hair.

I turned and hurtled back down the trail toward the inn, struggling to catch my breath. The murderer had claimed a second victim. As my arms flailed through the thorny rose bushes, I tried to think of what Estelle could have known that had made the murderer strike a second time. I cursed my bad timing; if I had made it to Cliffside just an hour or two sooner, maybe the grisly scene on the rocks behind me could have been forestalled.

John was in the back of the inn, sitting among the sweet peas, a large piece of glass propped up beside him. He must have been working on replacing the window when Grimes had come looking for me.

“John!” I called, gasping for breath.

He looked up, surprise in his green eyes. “Where have you been?” He hauled himself to his feet, wiping his hands on his jeans. “Grimes was here looking for you a little while ago. I told him to check Charlene’s store.”

“I need you to come,” I panted. “There’s been another murder.”

John’s brown face paled. He dropped his tools to the ground and grasped my shoulders with work-roughened hands. “Who? Where?” His dark green eyes bored into mine. “Are you okay?”

“It’s Estelle. She’s up on the cliff-near where Katz was”

John’s voice was urgent. “Are you sure she’s dead?”

“I think she is … she’s just lying there, she looks broken, and there’s blood in her hair.. “I shuddered, lifting my hands to cover my face. I jerked them away when I realized my fingers were still stained red with Estelle’s blood.

John ran toward his house, his plaid overshirt flapping in the breeze behind him. “I’m calling the paramedics,” he called back over his shoulder. “I need you to head back up there-I’ll find you, and you can show me where she is.”

“Got it.” I jogged back up toward the trail, not wanting to go back to where Estelle was, but knowing that somebody needed to. I was still reeling from the scene on the cliffs as I pushed through the thick rosebushes, trying to shield myself from the thorns. Why Estelle? My foot caught on a rock, and I regained my balance just in time to avoid crashing into yet another thicket of thorns.

As I climbed closer to the rocky place where the murderer had struck not once, but twice, I turned the problem over in my head and tried to shut the image of Estelle’s matted hair out of my mind. The same person had most likely murdered both Bernard Katz and Estelle: the location and the MO were the same. What had she known that she shouldn’t have? A frisson of fear crept up my back, and I pushed away the thought that my destination was the scene of two recent murders-one very recent. Despite the fact that my hairline was damp with sweat, a cold tingle ran down my spine as I remembered the cut brake lines on my bike. I had been poking around a good bit myself. What if the murderer decided I would be better off out of the way, too?

Whoever had killed Estelle was long gone, I told myself. If there had been any risk, wouldn’t the killer have dealt with me when I found Estelle? Besides, John had called the police, and might be on his way to join me already.

Even with these rational thoughts streaming through my brain, I felt very vulnerable and alone when I reached the windy spot above Estelle.

I stood a little way from the edge of the cliff, not daring to look down, my eyes instead scanning the underbrush for movement. Suddenly the bushes rustled behind me, and I whirled around to an explosion of white wings. My heart was about to burst out of my chest when I realized with a flood of relief that it was only a seagull.

By the time I heard footsteps on the path, it felt as if several hours had passed, even though it couldn’t have been more than twenty minutes. “John?”