“I forgot,” she said and picked up a slice of unbuttered toast. She bit into it, chewed slowly, then swallowed. “I shouldn’t have, but I did.”
“Tell me about him.”
She took another bite of toast. “I can’t afford you, remember, James?”
“I sometimes do pro bono.”
“I don’t think so. Have you discovered anything about the old couple?”
“Yes, I have. Everyone I’ve spoken to is lying through their collective dentures. Marge and Harve were here, probably at the World’s Greatest Ice Cream Shop. Why doesn’t anyone want to admit it? What’s to hide? So they had ice cream-who cares?”
He pulled up short, staring at the pale young woman sitting across from him. She took another bite of the dry toast. He lifted the dish of homemade strawberry jam and handed it to her. She shook her head. He’d never in his life told anyone about his business. Of course, old Marge and Harve weren’t really his business, not really, but then again, why the hell had everyone lied to him?
More to the point, why had he said anything about that case to her? She was a damned criminal, or at least she knew who had offed her father. If there was one thing he was sure of, it was that.
Whatever else she was-well, he’d find out. She had come to him. Confronted him. It saved him the trouble of seeking her out again.
“You’re right. That doesn’t make any sense. You’re sure folk lied to you?”
“Positive. It’s interesting, don’t you think?”
She nodded, took another bite of toast, and chewed slowly. “Why don’t I ask Amabel why no one admits to remembering them?”
“No, I don’t think so. I’m the private investigator here. I’ll do the asking. It’s not your job.”
She just shrugged.
“It’s too early for the World’s Greatest Ice Cream,” he said. “Maybe yo’d like to go for a walk on the cliffs? You look pale. A walk would put some color in your cheeks.”
She gave it a lot of thought. He said nothing more, just watched her eat the rest of that dry toast that had to be cold as a stone. She stood, brushed the crumbs from the legs of her brown corduroy slacks, and said, “I need to put on my sneakers. I’ll meet you in front of Amabel’s house in ten minutes.”
“Excellent,” he said, and meant it. Now he was getting somewhere. He’d open her up soon enough, just like a clam. Soon she would tell him all about her husband, her mother, her dead father, who hadn’t called her on the phone. No, that was impossible.
She also seemed perfectly normal, and that bothered him as well. When he’d found her hysterical and frightened yesterday, it had been what he’d expected. But this calm, this open smile that, to his critical eye, held no malice or guile, made him feel he’d missed the last train to Saginaw.
When he met her in front of her aunt’s house, she smiled at him. Where the hell was her guile?
Fifteen minutes later she was talking as if there wasn’t a single black cloud in her world. “… Amabel told me that The Cove was nothing until a developer from Portland bought up all the land and built vacation cottages. Everything went smoothly until the sixties, then everyone just forgot about the town.”
“Someone sure remembered, someone with lots of money. The place is a picture postcard.” He remembered old Thelma Nettro had told him the same thing.
“Yes,” she said, kicking a small pebble out of her path. “It’s odd, isn’t it? If the town died, then how was it resurrected? There’s no local factory to employ everyone, no manufacturing of any kind. Amabel said the high school closed back in 1974.”
“Maybe one of them has discovered how to tap into the Social Security Computer system.”
“That would only work in the short term. The fund only has money for, what is it? Fifteen months? It’s scary. No one would want to count on that.”
They stood on the edge of a narrow promontory and looked down at the fierce white spume, fanning upward when the waves hit the black rocks.