Triple Witch (25 page)

Mulligan twisted his head around and tried to bite Sam on the face, whereupon Wade raised Mulligan and
held him at arm’s length, and smacked him with his open hand.

“Settle down,” he barked, “or I’m going to knock you out just so you’ll quit it.”

Mulligan sagged, all the fight suddenly draining away. His eyes focusing, he gazed wonderingly around, as if unsure what had happened or how he’d gotten here. Lifting his hands, which looked as if they had gone through a meat grinder, he winced.

Then he sat down on the library lawn and began to cry.

Shaking their heads in embarrassment, the other kids moved away, while Arnold bent over the Banks boy to assess his injuries.

“Come on, Banks, try to sit up,” Arnold said. His tone was kind, but his eyes were narrowed with anger and disgust. “You took a beating, that’s all. Let’s see if we can get you moving.”

With an effort, Banks obeyed. He was a big, strapping kid with wide shoulders and a thick, muscular neck, a football player during the season. I knew his mother, a cheery little person whose husband had run off a couple of years earlier, and whose small-business plan—a local cleaning woman, she’d invented a spot remover she said was sure-fire—I had advised on.

Seeing Banks made me remember my promise to Clarissa, to try to help get Sadie Peltier’s folks out of their legal difficulties. I’d been thinking of Mrs. Banks when I made the promise, but now I thought she would probably have her hands full with her son.

I glanced at Mulligan again, surprised that a kid so much smaller than Banks could have done so much damage. Not for the first time, I thought Mulligan had a lot of potential for mayhem.

“All right, you sit here, now,” Arnold told Banks. “Get your wind. One of you kids run down to the Happy Landings,” he ordered, “get Banks, here, some water.”

The kids looked at each other.

“Go,” Arnold repeated, the razor-wire in his voice cutting through the spell of inertia they seemed to be under.

“Christ,” he muttered, “you’d think they were on the moon. Now, what the hell was this all about?” he demanded of Mulligan.

Peter Mulligan sobbed monotonously. “Banks,” he managed to say through the little gasps of his weeping. “It’s all his fault. Look,” he demanded, “at his arms.”

Hearing this, a look of new fear passed across Corey Banks’ battered features. He wrapped his arms around himself.

Mulligan sniffled deeply. “Ask him,” he went on, his phrases interrupted by small shudders, “who robbed those people in the park. He’s broken into some houses, too, where the summer people didn’t come this year. I bet he’s still got some of their stuff.”

Banks gazed stonily away, the pain of his injuries apparently fading by comparison with what he was hearing. “That’s bullshit,” he mumbled to nobody in particular.

Arnold shot him an admonishing glance, then returned to what Mulligan was saying.

“He’s using heroin. I don’t know where he’s getting the stuff. The same place Hallie was, probably.”

“Heroin?”

Mulligan nodded. “Uh-huh. Paying for it by doing crimes.”

Corey Banks struggled to his feet and attempted to limp away.

“Sit,” Arnold snapped without looking at him, and Banks sat.

“Hey, I’m the one got beat up,” he complained.

His arm came up shakily to take the paper cup of water one of the other kids brought grudgingly to him.

“Get in that squad car,” Arnold told Mulligan. “In
the back seat. And once you are in there, don’t move an inch.”

“You lock him up,” Mulligan said, climbing unsteadily to his feet and glaring at Banks, “you won’t have any more muggings and burglaries and all. You’ll see.”

“Oh, I see. Uh-huh. And how about assaults? People getting clobbered, they’re walking across the library lawn. We going to have many more of those?”

Mulligan’s gaze dropped. “I’m sorry,” he muttered. “I lost my temper, that’s all.” He went and sat in the squad car.

Arnold sighed deeply. “Lost his temper. Jesus.” He turned to the other boy. “Okay, Banks. Hold out your arms, let’s see ’em.”

Banks looked up, his expression all injured innocence. “Hey,” he protested, “that’s against my rights.”

Arnold’s expression as he gazed down at Banks was one of deep skepticism, mingled with a clear and obvious desire to swat Banks into the next county. “Yeah. And I could go over to your house, ask your mother to let me look at your room.”

Banks pushed up his shirtsleeves. Arnold stood looking at the boy’s arms in a silence that lengthened until Banks couldn’t take it anymore.

“All right?” he demanded. “You got your rocks off, staring?”

“Shut up, Banks,” Arnold replied, and turned away.

“Hey!” Banks cried out, suddenly aware that he had lost his privileged victim status.

“I’m gonna press charges, you know,” he yelled. “I wanna make a complaint. He broke my tooth, he can’t do that. And he can’t say that stuff about me, he’s got no proof. I got a skin condition, is all. Hey, I know my rights!”

Arnold spun on him. “Yeah, you’ve got rights. You’ve got a right to be watched by me every minute of the day and night from here on out. And you’ve got a
right to press charges. So you want to make a complaint against Mulligan, there, you come down to the station later on, and bring your mom with you. We’ll talk it over. We’ll talk it
all
,” he emphasized, “over.”

Banks’s bruised chin jutted out truculently, but he appeared to recognize the foolishness of any further discussion. The squad car backed away across the lawn to the street, with Mulligan in the back seat.

“Do you want me to call someone for you?” I asked Corey Banks when it had gone. “I could call your mom. Or you could come up to our house with us and call her from there.”

He was at the moment a terrifically unattractive young man. But he was also another mother’s son, and despite the fact that he wasn’t as injured as I had feared, I couldn’t just leave him.

“No,” he responded sulkily. “Get away from me.”

I had a flashback of Hallie Quinn, telling me the same. But I couldn’t force him. So I got into Wade’s truck, and when I looked back Corey Banks had begun limping painfully across the library lawn with his arms clutched over his chest, alone.

38
“He would do it for me, if our positions were reversed.”

We had finished writing up the arrangements for Ken’s and Tim’s burial service, scheduled for July third when many people who had known them would be in town. Now Ellie and I were sitting in my front parlor, working on the lists for the Fourth of July events.

Rather, Ellie was working and I was worrying.

“He wouldn’t just let me go, like I was nobody.” She tipped her head at the activities schedule. “I think we’ll
keep people busy with all this. The tourists will get a run for their money.”

Which was putting it mildly. The Fourth of July festivities began at dawn with a flag-raising service down on the dock, and ended nobody knew when. There was a salmon supper on the Baptist Church lawn, strawberry shortcake on the library steps, tours of a Navy warship, and a performance by the Marine Band Choir. There were children’s activities, too: a karaoke contest, a pet parade, a talent show, and of course the fireworks.

Also, there was Felicity Abbott-Jones’s visit, in whose honor George Valentine had just finished replacing the metal quonset he usually used for tools, in favor of a temporary—very temporary—ancient-looking wooden shack.

If she stayed out of the shack, George had remarked, Felicity would think it was an authentic eighteenth-century construction, and if she went in it would probably fall down on her head, and no one would have to worry about her, anymore.

“Ken would find out,” Ellie persisted, “who killed me.”

“That’s because Ken didn’t have anything better to do.” I was getting cold feet about the Willoughby expedition.

Ellie looked sorrowfully at me.

“Oh, all right,” I relented. “Ken wasn’t as bad as Benny Joe Stottlemeir, I’ll give him that much.”

Benny Joe Stottlemeir was a legend in Eastport. As a boy, he put bees and dry straw into Mason jars, then lit the straw on fire. He tossed dogs into wells, hung toddlers by their heels, and taped stray cats to the undersides of parked cars, to wait for the fun when the engines got started.

Later on, people sent their daughters on round-the-world tours, just so they would not marry Benny, who was pathologically handsome and who in spite of his
claim of having killed two men—some said five—could be personable when he chose to be.

But Benny’s luck ran out when a man who could not afford to treat his daughter to the wonders of the world—or perhaps just felt stiff-necked about the notion of paying for such a tour, just on account of Benny—began suspecting Benny of introducing his daughter to wonders of another sort entirely.

The result: Benny, dead of a gunshot wound. It was only a hip shot but he was gone when he hit the ground, which demonstrates what I said before about the Bisley; it’s not the wound that’ll kill you, but the shock.

“Benny Stottlemeir,” Ellie said quietly, “was mean. Kenny was only foolish. Do you think fifty quarts of whipping cream will be enough for the strawberry shortcake?”

I thought a minute, envisioning the steady stream of locals and tourists trooping up the library steps, all wanting dessert to top off their afternoon meal of grilled salmon. The shortcake was made with homemade biscuits, not the sponge cake stuff you can buy at the supermarket, and the strawberries would be fresh, hulled and sugared, sliced into blueware bowls.

“Seventy-five,” I said.

“Anyway,” she went on, writing on her shopping list, “when I look down in that grave, and the first shovelful of dirt falls on Ken, I intend to be able to tell him who put him there. And that,” she finished, “is my final word on the subject.”

When people say something is their final word on the subject, more words are usually forthcoming, but Ellie is a Mainer born and bred, so there were none.

Wade had gone with George to find out if the old horse trough from Hillside Cemetery could be moved to its original spot in front of the bank building for Felicity’s visit. They meant to tie up some ponies there, tame ones suitable for a children’s-ride concession, thus creating
yet another holiday activity while also furthering the cause of historical correctness.

Upstairs, Sam was huddled in his room with Tommy Daigle, where they were mending an old turnbuckle salvaged for use in tightening the shroud on their sailboat. While they worked, Sam was trying to convince Tommy that a muffler was a necessary item of automotive equipment for his old jalopy; Tommy wanted to spend the money on a raccoon tail.

And Victor, once again, was already in bed. He had come home from his real-estate trip looking thoughtful, quiet in the storm-on-the-horizon way that in the old days forewarned a tantrum and now cast an air of ominous silence over his end of the dinner table. In honor of the warm weather, we’d had cold couscous with shrimp, chilled leek soup, a fruit salad, and breadsticks, after which he had gone upstairs without a word to anyone.

“What do you suppose is really wrong with him?” Ellie asked. “Because I still think there is something. Beyond the usual, that is. And more than trying to make a career switch.”

Ellie is the one who understands most how troublesome Victor can be. She was around when he sent me a dozen apples and a note, inviting me to guess which one was poisoned. She was there when he phoned every ten minutes for six hours, hanging up each time I answered, and when I took the phone off the hook he called Arnold to say there was an emergency at my house and that Arnold should send a SWAT team. And she was present when Victor, upset that I had allowed Sam on a fishing trip—

—Victor regards fishing as an activity more simian than human, on a level with tail swinging and flea picking—

—arrived brandishing an emergency order of custody removal, and demanding that I hand Sam over.

Fortunately he was drunk at the time, so Ellie could
step up and snatch the order of removal away from him, and burn it in the sink.

“What’s wrong with him is, I confronted him on his behavior and told him I intended to have it out with him. And I told him I wanted Sam to be there.”

Ellie looked at me as if I’d reported taming a Bengal tiger.

“But he doesn’t want to,” I went on. “For one thing, it would show his true colors to Sam. Victor’s finessing Sam, so a blowup’s too blatant for his purposes. Probably we’ve seen the last of him for tonight.”

Ellie frowned, poring over her list. “It’s early. He could wait until Sam goes out with Tommy, and then come back down. Of course,” she added, “we
could
manage not to be here …”

“Oh, sure. Trap me in a squeeze play. Either I get to go to Willoughby’s, or I can get stuck in whichever level of hell Victor turns out to be landscaping for me.”

She shrugged. “We can avoid Willoughby if we’re quiet and careful. As for Victor, though, I’m starting to think he is like the poor, whom we shall always have with us.”

Now there was a ghastly thought. Before I could reply she got up and went to the hallway, returning with a canvas satchel. I saw a flashlight sticking out, a spare cell phone, other items stuffed down into it.

“Come on,” she said. “I’ve put together our kit. Equipment for trespassers. And I told Wade to meet us out front at eight.”

Grumbling, I pulled on the navy sweatshirt she thrust at me, and pulled the watch cap she offered over my hair. She wore a dark cotton pullover, dark pants, and a scarf, all of which made her appear dashing and slightly madcap; together I thought we resembled Lucy Ricardo and Ethel Mertz.

But she was going, and I couldn’t very well let her do it alone. “Is this how Kenny got you to go with him to Caribou?”

I hitched the satchel over my shoulder. “Just kind of muscled you and bullied you, and swept you along, until you felt you had no choice?”

Ellie stopped, gazing out the dining room window toward the water. On the horizon hung a nearly full moon, its glow the bright orange of a forest fire. That moon was going to light Willoughby’s place like an arena.