Wicked Fix (18 page)

His place was like one of those survivalist homesteads

you read about, in Utah or Wyoming, where they are

preparing for nuclear winter. The pantry was loaded

with labeled glass canning jars, a clean quarter inch of

wax showing at the top of each: jams, jellies, and preserves.

On a shelf over the soapstone sink, next to a

neatly organized array of veterinary supplies for the

animals, I spotted a CB radio set hooked up to run on a

battery.

"He came up to tell me Reuben was ... gone,"

Mike said. "See what kind of reaction he got from me,

too, I'll bet."

"Why would he do that?"

His laugh was mirthless. "In case I killed him, I

guess. As if I'd waste my time on that little--"

"Until just recently I had no idea that you even

knew Reuben," Ellie said.

Mike got up, put the kettle back onto the wood

stove's cook top. "Well, I did. Twenty years ago, I was

his ..."

Not his friend, surely. Mike was in his mid thirties

or so, no older. Which would have made him--

"Mascot, I guess you'd call it. Sidekick. Or pet. He

was a lot older than me, in his late teens." He glanced

fondly at Molly as the child, who had vanished somewhere,

came back in again.

"Sit down, honey," he said. "Eat some

gingerbread, and work on your plant hanger. We're going,"

he added, "to a crafts fair, and Molly's bringing some

of her things to sell."

Molly ignored the snack, seating herself at the table

and concentrating on one of her projects. Her deft

fingers spun long strands of string swiftly and cleverly,

knotting them to form an intricate pattern in macrame,

threaded with wooden beads.

"She knows all the macrame knots, don't you,

honey?" Mike said proudly.

"That's very nice," I told her sincerely, and her

smile was lovely. She was the spitting image of her

mother.

Ellie was explaining to Mike more about why we

were asking about Reuben Tate. "Would you rather

discuss it somewhere else?" I put in, indicating Molly.

He considered. "Honey, if you're not going to eat,

take that stuff upstairs." Silently, the little girl obeyed,

grabbing the cleverly knotted string plant hanger.

Then: "Reuben was a sickness," he said when his

daughter was out of earshot. "It was like he somehow

put a spell on me. I was fascinated by him at first. His

wild ways."

"Later," Ellie drew him out for my benefit, "you

married ..." With a nod at the photo, he mentioned

a name I didn't recognize. A good mother when she

could be, Mike said. A cook in the merchant marine, so

she wasn't around a lot. They were divorced.

"I got custody," Mike said. "She agreed to it. I'd

been in a little trouble in the past, but not anymore. No

time for getting stoned when you've got a kid to take

care of."

Molly's mother had been in town, in fact, on the

ship that had come into port the previous Friday evening,

the Star Hoisin, Mike said. She had come to the

cottage, taken Molly on a couple of outings.

Which explained a bit more about why the child

seemed a little withdrawn and weepy now. He didn't

elaborate on the reason for their divorce and I didn't

ask. It was Reuben I wanted to know about.

"So you hung around with him as a kid. He liked

you. He never bullied you or hurt you? That wasn't

exactly his usual behavior, from what I've heard of the

way he operated back then."

A look of regret passed over Mike's plain face. "I

wouldn't say he never bullied me. Like I said, I was a

little kid he could ... I don't know. Own, almost.

He wasn't abusive sexually if that's what you mean,"

he finished.

It was. I still didn't understand the attraction, on

either side. "How did you end your relationship with

him?"

He looked sharply at me. "I didn't end it. He left

town. I grew up. Life went on. And that was that."

"He came back," I pointed out. "Several times, according

to what I've heard. He didn't try to get in

touch with you then?"

"Well," he temporized, "he did, the first few times.

But I was married, and then we were pregnant with

Molly. I didn't give him any encouragement, so he lost

interest. Went on," he added, "to bigger and better

things."

His laugh didn't sound convincing. "So how come

Bob Arnold wanted to talk with you," I asked, "after

Reuben got killed?"

He poured more tea. "Not many people remembered

about me and Reuben. You know, it was just one

of those little-kid phases. But I guess Arnold recalled,

and you know him. God forbid he shouldn't cover all

the bases. And something about the way he talked to

me about it, I had a feeling he wouldn't be the last one

dredging up old stories."

Resentment tinged his voice briefly, went away

again. Wade had remembered it too, I recalled, so

probably Mike was right.

"But for me, what's past is past and that's the end

of it. This was twenty years ago, remember. Like I told

Arnold, in my book Reuben Tate was ancient history."

Not pleasant history, from his expression. But he

didn't seem to mind talking about it. "Can you think

of anyone who might have wanted to hurt him?" I

asked.

Ellie had wandered outside, carrying her tea. Now

she came back in and went to the window, where a

profusion of houseplants flourished like an indoor jungle.

Peering through the glass, she gazed out at the domestic

animals and the gardens.

Mike looked rueful. "Oh, there were plenty of

those. Open the phone book and point. Reuben was

mean ... and he was smart."

Everyone said so. "In what way? Knowing how to

hurt people? Their weaknesses?"

He nodded emphatically. "And how to get some

advantage out of them. Just for instance, the only jail

time he ever served, it was six months for breaking and

entering. Before," he added, his tone even, "he stopped

getting sent to jail, because no one would testify

against him, here." That matched what Paddy had

said.

"Most guys," Mike said, "when they get out of

jail, they have nothing more than they went in. It's just

empty time. But not Reuben. When he got out he had a

list of homosexual professional men in Maine. Dentists,

lawyers ... anybody he could blackmail."

Ellie glanced over from the window, peered back

out again. Something in the yard seemed to have fascinated

her.

"But I don't understand," I said, shocked and revolted

at the idea. "How would such a list even get

compiled?"

He shook his head. "I'm not sure. All I know is,

someone in jail had a list and Reuben somehow got

hold of it."

"And you knew about it because ..."

Matter-of-factly: "He made me type the blackmail

letters."

The notion was chilling; just the thought, for instance,

of Paddy or Terence getting such a letter made

me feel sick. And two decades earlier, even right now

in a lot of places, it would have been devastating.

"I had an old typewriter in my room," Mike explained.

"And he told me what to write. I didn't even

really understand what those letters were saying. Later,

though, of course I figured it out."

However improbable--I still didn't see quite how

it could have happened--it sounded absolutely like the

kind of scheme Reuben would have tried: cruel. Terrifying

in the extreme.

In short, right up Reuben Tate's alley. "My ex

husband says that Reuben knew some things about

him," I said. "Things that happened in the past, in

New York. Can you think of how Reuben might have

found out about them?"

It just seemed so unlikely. But Mike answered

quickly and surely. "Oh, he'd have no problem with

that. He told me about it, in fact, bragging. Went to

your ex-husband's house when he wasn't there,

snooped through the mail in the mailbox, found out

where he'd come from. Then he went to the library, got

on the computer, and looked on the Internet in back

issues of newspapers. Searched them for your ex

husband's name. Just a fishing expedition, but after he

hit paydirt it was easy."

So Reuben had been bragging his plan around, not

only to Paddy Farrell. As Ellie had said, underestimating

Reuben would be a mistake. "This last time he

came back, did he come here to the cottage? Did he ask

for anything? Maybe threaten you, too?"

"Actually, he did," Mike replied. "Heard where I

lived, climbed the hill. Can't keep a bad man down, I

guess. And he was a real bastard."

"What did he want?" Ellie asked casually.

Too casually, and her glance at me as she came to

the table was pointed. I got up and went to the window

where she had been.

"Oh, the usual," Mike replied. "Had a bottle with

him; he'd heard I was divorced. Maybe he thought

we'd get to be drinking buddies." He snorted. "As if."

Drawing back a gingham curtain, I scanned the

yard with its compost heap and neatly kept animal

pens, then stopped when I saw the big chopping block

made of a squat, upended log.

It was covered with blood.

Those chickens, I thought, my heart hammering

foolishly. He butchered a chicken,

that's all. I had an abrupt, unwelcome vision

of one of the creatures running around headless;

a vision, I gathered, that had been reality not long

ago. Feathers littered the area around the chopping

block. I let the curtain drop.

"So when you knew him back then, you were

eleven or twelve, and Reuben was ... nineteen or

twenty?"

Mike nodded. "Something like that. My parents

didn't know about it, of course. And the attraction

was, he liked to be the power in any situation."

Reuben Tate was just rising like hell in my estimation.

Blackmail, murder, pedophilia or one of its

cousins--what would be next among his habits: cannibalism?

"And he liked that I would do what he said," Mike