When I emerged from the bathroom, I found Connie rummaging through her purse. “Dennis isn’t at the station. They say he’s gone home.”
A quarter fell out of her wallet, and I caught up with it before it rolled away between the wooden planks and dropped into the water below. “Here.” I handed it to her. “What do we do now?”
“Call him at home, I guess.” She picked up the receiver. “Damn! It’s thirty-five cents. Do you have a dime?”
I patted my empty pockets and shrugged. Connie let the receiver dangle from its short cord while she rooted through her purse, found a dime, and slotted it into the telephone after the quarter. She punched in a number without looking it up. Abruptly she passed the receiver to me. “Ask for Dennis.”
I frowned and listened to the phone ring three times. I was going to get even with Connie for this. On the fourth ring a female voice chirped, “Rutherford’s.”
“Ms. Rutherford?” Coward, I mouthed in Connie’s direction. She began pacing up and down the dock. “Ms. Rutherford, this is Hannah Ives. I wonder if your father is at home?”
“Sorry, he’s not, Mrs. Ives. He went off duty at six. He may have dropped in at the nursing home to visit my grandfather, though. He often does that in the evening.”
“Thanks. I’ll try to catch him there. If he comes home in the next few minutes, please tell him I called. It’s important. Let me give you the number.”
“Oh, I know the number, Mrs. Ives.” She hung up without saying good-bye, adding fuel to the fire of my suspicion that something intriguing was going on between Connie and Dennis.
I held the receiver to my ear until the dial tone kicked in, then handed it over to Connie. “Do you think she’ll deliver the message?”
“I don’t know,” Connie said. “Fifty-fifty.” In the light from the overhead lightbulb, her face looked flushed.
“She said he might be at the nursing home. Let’s go. We can catch up with him there.”
Connie didn’t move. She was staring out into the Truxton, where the sky had gathered up the blues and grays from the water and lights were just beginning to twinkle on in the waterfront homes on the other side of the river. “I feel numb,” she said. “I would have trusted Hal with my life.”
I thought about Frank Chase and Liz Dunbar, an odd couple if there ever was one, and wondered what dark secrets they shared. I thought about the glances that passed between Connie and Dennis when they thought I wasn’t looking. “I’m finding that nothing in Pearson’s Corner is what it seems,” I told her.
We headed back to the car, not speaking. Connie had already climbed into the driver’s seat and I had a hand on the door handle on the passenger side when I noticed a familiar car in the parking lot, Liz’s black Lexus. I wrenched open my door and leaned in. “Connie! Liz Dunbar is here. I didn’t know she sailed.”
“She doesn’t.” Connie turned her head and peered through the rear window.
“What’s she doing here then?”
“I don’t know.” Connie slid out of her seat and joined me. She leaned back against the trunk of her car and surveyed the parking lot. “And Frank’s here, too.”
I had missed it. Frank Chase’s blue Ford was parked farther away, next to the icehouse adjacent to the marina office. “This could not be a coincidence,” I said. “If Hal is running drugs, as we suspect, do you suppose those two are involved in the business, too?” Pieces of the puzzle were beginning to fall into place. Katie’s habit. Liz’s source of money for college. The volatile relationship between Liz and Frank. But I still couldn’t figure out what Katie’s pregnancy had to do with any of it.
My attention turned from Frank’s car to the marina office. From where we stood, it looked deserted. The side facing us was a blank wall of board and batten siding, painted gray like the store. The only opening, a single door, was closed and dark. “Doesn’t look like anybody’s home.”
“You can’t tell from here,” Connie said. “The main entrance is on the water side.”
I had an idea. “Connie, you’re a boat owner. We have legitimate business here. Hal doesn’t know about…” I jerked my head in the direction of the shed where a Pegasus lighter than manufacturer’s specifications lay. “Let’s pay them a call. You can say you’re looking for…” I cast around in my mind for the name of some nautical part, some little marine gizmo that would probably cost five cents at Ace Hardware or $10.95 if you bought it at the Ships Store. “Say you’re desperate for a cotter pin and the store is closed.”
“Why do I get this feeling you’re about to drag me into more trouble?”
“I just want to see what they’re up to in there. Maybe it’ll turn out to be nothing. Maybe they’re just eating pizza or something.”
“I don’t like it.”
Nevertheless, Connie went along with my plan, claiming that Paul would never forgive her if something happened to me on her watch.
We skirted the Dumpster that occupied two parking spaces at the far end of the parking lot. Beyond the Dumpster a squat hedge shielded several recycling cans from view. It was my intention to march into the office, bold as a brass band on a Sunday afternoon, but as we drew even with the hedge, we could hear voices raised in anger.
“That’s it, I tell you. I’m out of it.” Frank Chase’s voice carried even over the noise of an air conditioner running in the Ships Store behind us. I put a hand on Connie’s back and pushed, forcing her closer to the edge of the hedgerow, where we made ourselves small behind a flowering shrub. From there we had a nearly unobstructed view inside the marina office through the uncurtained window.
“I don’t think it’s about pizza,” I whispered to Connie.
Liz responded to something, waving her arms, but I couldn’t hear what she said.
“You can’t lay that responsibility on me, Liz. You’re the one who wouldn’t let me take her to the hospital.” Dr. Chase had been sitting in a chair but rose to face her. Mercifully the air conditioner chose that moment to cycle off.
“Fat lot of good that would have done after you shot her, Frankie.”
“I shot her? That’s a crock. You were the one holding the gun, Liz, not me. Ranting on about Harvard and how would you ever live down the scandal!”
I grabbed Connie’s hand and squeezed. “Holy shit!” she said.
“Where’s Hal?” I whispered back.
I was feeling smug and somewhat relieved that he wasn’t there, so when he appeared, my heart sank to my toes. At first I thought he was going to intervene, like a referee, throw a bucket of cold water on the dueling cats, maybe, but he merely observed the escalating argument, standing quietly near his desk where a green-shaded lamp cast a circle of light over stacks of papers and catalogs piled there.
My knees began to ache from being locked in a crouch for so long, but I wouldn’t have moved from that spot for a million dollars. Hal finally spoke. “Come off it, you two. You’re both responsible.”
Liz’s head swivelled around. “You’re a good one to talk about responsibility. You gave her the money for the abortion, don’t forget.”
“At least she trusted me, Liz,” Hal said.
“And what was that worth? If you’d cared about her at all, you’d have seen to it that she didn’t fall into the hands of a quack.”
“A quack? How the hell was I supposed to know how she spent the money or where she went? She made it abundantly clear that she didn’t want me involved.” As he talked, Hal had been pacing in front of his desk, but suddenly he moved away, out of my view.
I stood up and moved to my left to get a better look. Connie grabbed my pants leg and jerked me down so hard that I thought my wig would fly off. “They’ll see you, you idiot!” Her voice was a husky whisper.