Still Water (26 page)

The only other thing he’d done that afternoon was to speak to Ruth Thorne when she called.

“I thought about what you said Mr. Jones, and I want you to find out if Charlie is cheating on me. If he is then I’m too good for him, and I don’t want to stay with someone like that a second longer than I have to.”

There was no trace of indecision in her tone, and though Matt didn’t much like the role he was taking on he thought, good for you. He liked Ruth Thorne, and he hoped whichever way it turned out that he could help her.

“Call me Matt, by the way,” he told her. He asked her to check out when her husband would next be staying away the night, and to give him a call and he’d find out where he went. “Then we’ll get together and you can hear what I have to say before you decide what you want to do, okay? I want you to take this a step at a time. I’ll just charge you for the time each step takes. And as you’re my first client this week, you get a special forty percent discount as well.” He wondered why he’d added that last piece, not having planned to, but when he heard how grateful she sounded, he was pleased that he had.

“I really appreciate that Mr. Jones. I mean Matt. To tell the truth I was kind of worried about how much this would cost.”

“Don’t worry,” Matt found himself saying. “We’ll work something out.” As he hung up, he hoped that there was going to be a steady demand for Henry’s cider, because he doubted he was going to make much money as a lawyer.

He went home and changed, and thought about calling Ella, but he guessed she’d want some time alone with her mother after spending a night in jail. After dark he headed into town in need of a change of scenery. He wondered briefly whether Baxter had fared better in his search for Gant, assuming he’d even been looking. The fact was he no longer knew what to make of Baxter. He kept thinking about the chief and Howard Larson standing together at the end of the corridor when he’d arrived at the court house. He wondered what they’d been talking about.

Matt parked his car near a bar called The Lobster Pot opposite the docks where the pleasure craft were moored, and as he crossed the street he saw Kate Little’s Mercedes parked outside.

The door to The Lobster Pot was at street level, and opened to a narrow flight of stairs that led to a bar and restaurant where the tables looked over the harbour. It was gloomy inside, the red lampshades on the tables contributing to a slightly dated atmosphere. The place had the feel of somewhere that might have been popular elsewhere back in the early eighties.

The restaurant was busy, many of the tables taken by people eating dinner. Talk drifted loudly about fishing, rumours exchanged about bluefin that had been seen that day. The customers were mostly visitors, and if they were bothered by the decor they didn’t show it. The menu on the wall featured lobster and crab heavily, along with other sea food. Plastic lobsters and old pots had been hung around the walls, and above the bar a dusty net hung down, studded with fake fish and molluscs.

Matt went to the bar and ordered a beer and found himself charged an extra buck. When he expressed surprise the bartender apologized.

“Sorry, thought you were one of them.” He nodded towards a table of guys who talked and looked as if they were from the city. “Locals get a discount.” He indicated a new price list had been posted behind the bar. It appeared that inflation had inexplicably run out of control on St. George. The bartender gave Matt his dollar back, winked at him then went to serve somebody else.

Matt looked around for Kate Little, and spotted her sitting alone at a table in the corner where she was gazing out of the window. She was dressed in light coloured pants and a dark navy jacket, and in the red glow from the lamp her hair shone like hot coals on a fire. He watched her for a few moments unobserved, trying to form an impression of her. She had an almost empty glass in front of her, and an ashtray full of stubbed out cigarettes. She appeared lost in some private contemplation, her gaze distant and unfocused through the window. Outside the lights in the harbour were blinking, and Kate’s reflection stared back at her.

He spoke to a waitress, then went over to Kate. “Would you mind if I join you?”

She looked up, startled by the sound of his voice, then when she recognized him she indicated a chair. “Help yourself.”

He sat down, and a waitress brought over a screwdriver. “I saw your glass was about empty,” Matt explained.

She stared at him for a full five seconds as if trying to decide whether to accept the drink, then she made a small movement of her head. “Thank you.”

“You folks eating this evening?” the waitress asked.

“Would you like to join me?” Matt said.

“Thanks but I have to go back and fix dinner for Evan.” She lit a cigarette from the pack on the table. She wore several rings on her long elegant fingers. The diamonds glittered in the light.

“Let me know if you change your mind,” the waitress said.

When they were alone Matt raised his drink, and after a second Kate responded and they touched glasses. “I understand you’ve been coming to the island for a while. Do you spend the whole summer here?”

“About three months normally.”

“It must seem pretty quiet after New York.”

“Evan likes it that way. He doesn’t like to have a lot of people around. Did you have any luck with your missing person?” Kate said after a while.

“Bryan Roderick? Not yet.”

“The police didn’t find anything when they searched the cove did they?”

“No.”

“Do you think he’s dead?”

The query was almost casual. Almost but not quite. “I don’t know,” Matt said.

She lit another cigarette and blew smoke across the table. “I heard that somebody was arrested yesterday.”

“Ella Young. The woman I mentioned to you. She was released again this morning. Ella’s my client.”

Kate stared at him and her surprise was obvious.

“How is your husband today Mrs. Little?” he asked her.

“He’s a little better. He has good days and bad.”

“Do you mind if I ask how he was injured?”

“It happened on a skiing trip. Evan hit a tree. He was lucky he wasn’t killed.”

“I’m sorry.”

She emptied her glass and put it down on the table, then signalled for the waitress to bring her another. Matt wondered how many she’d had. She didn’t seem drunk, but then a lot of people who drank all the time could appear sober when others would have passed out under the table.

“It was a long time ago now. He was a very active man before his accident.” Kate looked out the window again, and Matt had the feeling she didn’t see her own reflection or the lights in the harbour, but was looking inward at her own memories. When the waitress brought her drink Kate seemed to remember that Matt was there.

“We’d only been married for eighteen months when it happened. I was a model when we met,” she told him.

He could believe it. She was an attractive woman. “This was in New York?”

“Yes.” She smiled for the first time since he’d sat down. “I didn’t even like him at first. Evan was already wealthy then, he’d started his own software company before that kind of thing really took off. Have you ever been married Mr. Jones?”

“Matt. And yes I was once.”

“Did you fall in love with your wife the day you met her?”

“I don’t think so. I think it took a while.”

“I think it can sometimes. Funny isn’t it? Evan used his money to impress people, but when that didn’t work with me he was intrigued. I guess he saw me as some kind of challenge. He had to revert to the old-fashioned methods, the tried and true.” She picked up her drink and took a long sip. “He was quite different then. Charming, funny. I hardly even knew I was falling in love with him. The accident changed him.”

“You mentioned that the medication he takes affects his moods?”

“It exaggerates them. Evan was always a little obsessive. The drugs just made him worse.”

“That must have been difficult for you.”

“You could say that.”

There was a trace of bitterness in her tone, but more than that she sounded sad. Matt sipped at his beer. He could only guess at the exact nature of Kate’s relationship with her husband, but he imagined their marriage was not a happy one, and probably hadn’t been for a long time. “A lot of people would have found your situation difficult to handle,” he ventured.

She regarded him levelly. “Are you wondering why I didn’t leave my husband Mr. Jones?”

“No, I didn’t mean that,” Matt said, but he knew she wasn’t fooled.

“Most people assume I stayed because of his money. They’re wrong.” She jabbed out her cigarette in the ashtray with short stabs and Matt wondered how often she’d been accused of being a gold digger. “People always assume the worst don’t they? Love and hate are intense emotions. Maybe it’s true what they say, that they’re only divided by a thin line.”

He wasn’t sure what she meant by that, except that he recalled that for a time shortly after Kirstin had left him to live with another man, he had hated her too. He’d felt betrayed and humiliated, and later he’d been consumed with self-pity. He’d begun drinking heavily, and through that period he’d mourned the breakdown of his marriage, and he’d both loved and hated Kirstin at the same time, his feelings sometimes fluctuating a dozen times within an hour.

Kate Little put her cigarettes away in her purse, and looked at her watch. “I should be getting back.”

“There was something I wanted to ask you,” Matt said. “Your husband seemed very certain that he didn’t sleep in his office on the night Bryan Roderick disappeared. I mean with all the medication he takes, he could be wrong couldn’t he?”

“It’s possible.”

“You don’t remember yourself where he slept?”

“No. Evan and I have separate rooms, even when he’s upstairs. He gets very restless at night and he needs a special bed.”

Matt thought about that. “So, when your husband said you were both sleeping around two fifteen that night, when shots were heard in the cove, he was actually only speaking for himself. In the sense that he couldn’t have known whether you were in your room or not.”

“I suppose so,” she admitted.

“Did you hear anything that night Mrs. Little?”

“No.”

“Were you home the entire night?”

She regarded him levelly for several seconds. “Yes, I was.”

Matt was struck with a conviction based on nothing more than instinct, gut feeling, that she was lying.

She drained the remnants of her glass. “And now, unless you have any other questions, I have to go.”

“No, I don’t have any more questions,” Matt said, rising with her. “Goodnight Mrs. Little.”

“Goodnight.”

Through the window he saw her emerge on to the street and cross to her car. It occurred to him that she shouldn’t be driving with the amount she’d had to drink, but it was too late for him to stop her now. As she got in her car she glanced up, and just for a moment their eyes met, but her expression was enigmatic.

Matt stayed to finish his beer, thinking about Kate Little, ideas going around in his mind. The waitress came over to clear the table, and on impulse he asked if Kate came in very often.

“She’s pretty regular.”

“You ever see her talk to anyone in particular?”

The waitress looked at him shrewdly, figuring he was interested in Kate himself. “You mean a guy? She’s married you know.”

“That’s not what I had in mind.” He found a five dollar bill to tip her.

“Well, she talks to a lot of people. There was one guy she used to be in here with for a while, Jordan Osborne, but that was last year.”

Matt made a mental note of the name. “Nobody recently. How about Bryan Roderick? You ever see her with him?”

The waitress shook her head. “No, Bryan didn’t come in here much, but I guess she would have been his type. He would have thought she was classy.” She pulled a face, as if it was an opinion she didn’t agree with.

Matt thanked her, and finished his beer before he left. He thought about going somewhere to get something to eat, but everywhere appeared to be busy catering for the sudden influx of people to the island. He knew that all he had at home was half a loaf of stale bread and some of Henry’s smoked fish. He hadn’t been able to muster the will to buy any groceries lately, much less actually turn his mind to fixing himself dinner. He’d survived on what Henry gave him, and what he could heat in the microwave, but neither option appealed to him right now. In the end he decided he wasn’t hungry.

Outside as he crossed the street to his car, he met Ben Harper coming from the direction of the dock, and they stopped to exchange a few words. Matt asked if he’d fixed his boat yet, and Ben said he thought he needed a new part. Since Matt was heading that way, he offered Ben a ride to the inn where he was staying.

“How’s your research going with that whale?” he asked as they drove along the waterfront.

“Orca,” Ben said, correcting him. “I’ve taken some samples which I’ll take back to Woods Hole. That’s about all I can do. The rest I’ll leave to nature.”

“How much longer are you staying?”

“Couple of days maybe. Depends when I can get a part for my boat. I wouldn’t mind a look at those bluefin everyone’s talking about while I’m here.”

They pulled up outside the inn. You figure out who that woman was I saw in the cove yet?”

“I know who she is. Don’t know if it helps me much yet,” Matt said.

“I heard about Ella Young getting arrested. She your client?”

“Yes.”

The whole town’s talking about it. That and the bluefin of course.”

“What are they saying?”

“That she was charged with murder. And there was a witness.”

“Well she was, but she’s been released. For now anyway. And nobody knows where the witness is. What do people think? They think she did it?”

“From what I’ve heard it sounds as if opinion’s divided, but probably more think she did than think she didn’t.” Ben sounded apologetic about being the bearer of bad news. “It’s just what I’ve overheard. An impression. I could be wrong.”

“No, you’re not wrong,” Matt said wearily. He hadn’t expected any different.