I had wondered about that, but I didn’t feel like sharing my suspicions with Bill. No telling what he’d do with them. They might even end up in his book. “I can be just as careless or unlucky as the next person, Bill,” I said, peering into the kitchen as he scooped tuna fish salad onto thickly sliced bread.
“I’d just watch who you’re being friendly with.” He squinted back at me. “That’s my advice.”
“Bill, I hardly know anybody in Pearson’s Corner.”
“Sometimes it’s the people closest to you that you least suspect.”
“I think you’ve been staring at your computer screen too long. You can’t mean Connie.” Bill shook his head.
“Dennis?” Bill met my gaze with steady, unblinking eyes. “You think Dennis had something to do with my falling overboard? Or the accident? That’s impossible. He’s a cop, for Christ’s sake. Besides, I saw the guys who ran me off the road. I didn’t recognize either one of them.”
“You don’t have to be driving to be responsible for something.”
I felt a sudden chill, as if a shadow had passed over the sun and the wind had picked up. My intuition had been telling me the same thing, but I couldn’t make it fit. “Bill, I think you’re wrong. What possible reason could anybody have for bumping me off?”
“I don’t think they’re trying to bump you off. I think they want you to go home. Mind your own business.”
“Who’s ‘they’?”
“Don’t know. Just a gut feeling I have.”
Don’t know or won’t tell? I checked off the people I knew: Connie and Dennis. Angie and her mother. Frank Chase and Liz. Bill here… and, Lord help me, Hal.
“Surely you can’t mean Hal? I hardly know the man.”
“That’s not what I hear.” He was folding waxed paper around the sandwich, making surprisingly crisp and neat edges.
“Well, you heard wrong. What is it with this place? Go sailing with a fellow once and every busybody in town has you heading off to Las Vegas for a quickie wedding.”
“There’s a lot you don’t know about him.” He slid the sandwich over in my direction and wiped his hands on a dish towel.
“I’m sure there is, and it will probably stay that way.” I couldn’t protest too strongly without sounding sweet on the guy.
“Let me tell you something about that boyfriend of yours.”
“For the last time… he’s not my boyfriend!”
“Did you know that he used to be the coach of the high school basketball team?”
This was his big secret? A wave of relief washed over me. “Yes. Hal told me all about that. He was very proud of winning the state championship.”
“And did he tell you why he left?” I didn’t say anything. Bill wore a self-satisfied smirk. “I didn’t think so. He was forced to resign.”
“Forced? Why on earth?”
“Oh, it was all very hush-hush. Didn’t want to upset the parents, create a scandal.” Bill seemed to be enjoying himself, dragging out the telling of it.
“A scandal about what, for heaven’s sake?”
“It was never proven, of course, but he was suspected of providing some of the team with amphetamines and anabolic steroids.” The corners of his mouth twisted up in a hint of a smile. I wanted to smack it off his face.
“But you were on the team, Bill. Surely you’d have known if the allegations were true or not.”
“Not me. I was second string, one step up from water boy. Nobody told me anything.”
“I can’t believe Hal would do such a thing.”
“I believe the rumors, Mrs. Ives, because there’s more to it.”
“There’s more?” I hadn’t even begun to recover from the first revelation before he zapped me with another.
“I’m fairly certain that Hal was pushing other drugs, too.”
“You can’t be serious!”
“Marijuana. Cocaine. Even heroin. That’s what I heard, anyway. Katie had to be getting them from somewhere. She was high as a kite at her sweet sixteen party, and she was high at the homecoming dance, too, if you ask me.”
My God! Maybe that’s what Angie was getting at when she told me that Katie was totally spaced out at the dance. “Amphetamines and steroids aren’t in the same league with hard drugs,” I reasoned. “Why do you think it was Hal who supplied Katie with the hard stuff? Couldn’t she have gotten them from someone else? Her sister perhaps?”
“Naw, Liz was a straight arrow. Had to be, didn’t she, to get into Harvard Law?” I thought that Bill’s confidence in the selection criteria of the admissions board at Harvard was a bit naive, but I didn’t say so.
“If you know all this, why don’t you take it to the police?”
“It’s just rumor. There’s no hard evidence.”
“Why are you telling me about it then?”
“I like you, Mrs. Ives. You’ve been real nice to Angie. I’d really hate to see anything happen to you.”
I picked up my sandwich and prepared to go. “If you ask me”-I jerked my head in the direction of the doctor’s office-“young Dr. Chase over there would have been in a much better position to supply Katie with drugs than Hal Calvert ever was!”
“You don’t have to take my word for it.” I watched while he took a deep breath and held it while he decided what to say next. “Check out the boat.”
“What boat? Pegasus?” Bill didn’t answer but started to walk across the kitchen. “You have some sort of grudge against Hal?” I aimed my remark at his departing back. The screen door slammed behind him, leaving me standing there alone in the store, except for a calico cat curled up, napping, on the front counter.
Connie was fixing dinner when I arrived, assembling lasagna in an oversize pan. “Thank goodness you’re back! And still in one piece.” She wiped her hands on a paper towel and studied me. “So, how’d it go with Frank Chase at the office today?”
“I was fired.”
“Imagine my surprise.”
“There wouldn’t have been any point in staying on. The man could never trust me again.” I told Connie about my conversation with Dr. Chase and about what I’d learned from Bill.
She ran the back of her hand over her forehead, damp from the steam rising from a pot where the lasagna noodles were boiling. “Do you think I’d have left you alone with Hal if I’d heard even a peep about him dealing drugs?”
“My thoughts exactly.”
“But I sure didn’t know that Liz and Frank were so tight.” She handed me a can of fruit cocktail and a hand-crank can opener. “Drain it in the sink.”
“I need you to come with me, Connie,” I said as I opened the can.
“Where?”
“Bill’s suggesting there’s something not quite kosher about Pegasus.”
“You’re kidding.”
“I’m not. And he looked so smug.”
“What could be wrong? Last time I saw Pegasus she was up on jack stands being repaired.” Connie had slipped into sailing jargon again.
“What’s a jack stand?” I asked.
“Sorry.” She dumped a container of sour cream into a bowl and folded the fruit cocktail and a cup of miniature marshmallows into it. “They’re metal braces that prop a boat up when it’s out of the water.”
My stomach growled, despite the sandwich I’d gulped down in the car. When I thought Connie wasn’t looking, I snitched a marshmallow from the bowl and popped it into my mouth. “I don’t know anywhere near as much about boats as you do,” I said, “so if I’m going to check out Bill’s ridiculous theory, you’ll need to come with me.”
Connie looked as if she wanted to rap my knuckles. “Hannah, you are trouble on wheels. Leave it be. I want to live to fifty, dah-link. Hanging around with you could be dangerous.”