“Right.” She said, “But that would have to be someone with the new key.”
We continued toward the house to the top level of the deck and stopped a few feet from the two chalk outlines, Beth opposite Judy’s and me opposite Tom’s. I said, “The Gordons have a few more feet to go, a minute or less to live. What do they see?”
Beth stared down at the chalk outlines, then looked at the house in front of us, at the glass doors, at the immediate area left and right. Finally, she said, “They’re still heading toward the house, which is twenty feet away. There’s no indication they were trying to run. They’re still side by side, there’s no concealment anywhere, except the house, and no one can get off two head shots from that distance. They had to know the killer, or they were not alarmed by the killer.”
“Right. I’m thinking the killer could have been lying in a chaise lounge, faking sleep, which is why he or she didn’t go down to greet the Gordons at the dock. The Gordons knew this person and maybe Tom called out, ‘Hey, Joe, get up and help us with this chest of Ebola vaccine.’ Or anthrax. Or money. So, the guy gets up, yawns, takes a few steps toward them from any of these chaises, gets within spitting range, pulls a pistol, and drills them through their heads. Right?”
She replied, “Possible.” She walked around the chalk outlines and stood where the killer must have stood, not five feet away from the feet of the chalk outlines. I moved up to where Tom had been standing. Beth raised her right hand and held her right wrist with her left hand. She pointed her finger right at my face and said, “Bang.”
I said, “They were not carrying the chest when they were shot. It would fly out of Tom’s hand when he was shot. Tom and Judy put the chest down first.”
“I’m not sure they were carrying any chest. That’s your theory, not mine.”
“Then where is the chest that was always in the boat?”
“Who knows? Anywhere. Look at those two outlines, John. They’re lying so close together, I wonder if they could have been carrying a four-foot-long chest between them.”
I looked back at the outlines. She had a point, but I said, “They could have put the chest down a few feet back, then walked toward their killer, who may have been lying on the chaise or standing here or had just walked out of this sliding door.”
“Maybe. In any case, I think the Gordons were acquainted with their killer or killers.”
“Agreed.” I said to Beth, “I don’t think it was chance that put the killer there and the Gordons there. It would have been easier for the killer to do the shooting inside the house rather than out here. But he chose this spot—he set up his shots right here.”
“Why?”
“The only reason I can think of is that he had a registered pistol, and he didn’t want the bullets subject to ballistics later, if he became a suspect.”
She nodded and looked out toward the bay.
I continued, “Inside the house, the rounds would have lodged somewhere, and maybe he wouldn’t have been able to recover them. So, he goes for two close-up head shots with a large-caliber pistol and with nothing between the exit wounds and the deep bay.”
She nodded again. “Looks that way, doesn’t it?” She added, “That changes the profile of the killer. He’s not a hophead, or an assassin with an unregistered piece. It’s someone with no access to an untraceable piece—it’s a good citizen with a registered pistol. Is that what you’re suggesting?”
I said, “It fits what I see here.”
“That’s why you want the names of locals with registered weapons.”
“Right.” I added, “Big-caliber, registered as opposed to an illegal or hot weapon, and probably an automatic pistol as opposed to a revolver because revolvers are nearly impossible to silence. Let’s start with that theory.”
Beth said, “How does a good citizen with a registered pistol get an illegal silencer?”
“Good question.” I pondered the whole profile I’d come up with and said, “Like anything else in this case, there’s always one inconsistency that screws up a good theory.”
“Right.” She added, “And then there are those twenty .45 caliber automatics on Plum Island.”
“Indeed there are.”
We talked it out awhile, trying to piece this thing together, trying to make it 5:30 P.M. yesterday, instead of 5:30 P.M. today.
I could see a uniformed Southold policeman through the glass doors, but he didn’t see us and moved away.
After about five minutes of noodling, I said to Beth Penrose, “When I was a kid, I used to come out here from Manhattan with my All-American-type family—Dad, Mom, brother Jim, and sister Lynne. We usually rented the same cottage near Uncle Harry’s big Victorian, and we spent two weeks getting eaten by mosquitoes. We got poison ivy, we got fish hooks in our fingers, and then we got sunburned. We must have enjoyed it, because we looked forward to it every year, the Coreys on their annual S&M outing.”
She smiled.
I continued, “One year, when I was about ten, I found a musket ball, and it blew my mind. I mean, some guy fired that thing a hundred or maybe two hundred years before. Then Harry’s wife, my Aunt June—God rest her soul—took me to a place near the hamlet of Cutchogue that she said was once a Corchaug Indian village, and she showed me how to look for arrowheads and cooking pits and bone needles and all that. Incredible.”
Beth said nothing, but she was looking at me as if this was very interesting.
I went on, “I remember that I couldn’t sleep nights thinking about musket balls and arrowheads, settlers and Indians, British soldiers and Continental soldiers, and so forth. Before the two weeks of magic ended, I knew I wanted to be an archaeologist when I grew up. It didn’t work out that way, but I think that was one reason I became a detective.”
I explained to her about Uncle Harry’s driveway and how they once used cinders and clam shells to keep down the dust and mud. I said, “So, a thousand years from now, an archaeologist is digging around, and he finds these cinders and shells, and he makes the assumption it was a long cooking pit. Actually, he’s found a driveway, but he’s going to make what he thinks is a cooking pit fit his theory. Follow?”
“Sure.”
“Right. Okay, here’s my speech to my class. Want to hear it?”
“Shoot.”
“Okay, class—what you see at the scene of a homicide is frozen in time, it is no longer a moving, living dynamic. You can create several stories about this still life, but these are only theories. A detective, like an archaeologist, can assemble hard facts and solid scientific evidence, and still draw the wrong conclusions. Add to this, a few lies and red herrings and people who are trying to help but make mistakes. Plus people who tell you what you want to hear consistent with your theory, and people with hidden agendas, and the murderer himself, who may have planted false clues. Through all this mess of contradictions, inconsistencies, and lies is the truth.” I said to Beth, “At this point, if my timing is right, the bell rings and I say, ‘Ladies and gentlemen, it is your job to know the truth.’ ”
She said, “Bravo.”
“Thank you.”
“So, who killed the Gordons?” she asked.
“Beats the hell out of me,” I replied.
CHAPTER 15
We stood in the sun-dappled lane near Beth Penrose’s black PD. It was approaching six o’clock. I said, “How about a cocktail?”
She replied, “Can you find Margaret Wiley’s house?”
“Maybe. Is she serving cocktails?”
“We’ll ask. Jump in.” I got in. She started the big engine and off we went, north through Nassau Point, across the causeway, and onto the mainland of the North Fork.
“Which way?” she asked.
“Right, I think.”
She took the turn with squealing tires. I said, “Slow down.”
She slowed down.
It was pleasant with the windows down, the setting sun, the clean air, and all of that. We were away from the bay area now and
were in farm and vineyard country. I said, “When I was a kid, there were two kinds of farms—potato farms owned mostly by Polish and German families who came here around the turn of the century, and the fruit and vegetable farms owned mostly by the original settlers. There are farms here that have been in the same family for three hundred and fifty years. Hard to comprehend.”
She stayed silent awhile, then said, “My family owned the same farm for a hundred years.”
“Really? And your father sold it?”
“Had to. By the time I was born, the farm sat in the middle of the suburbs.” She added, “We were considered weird. I was laughed at in school. For being a farmer’s daughter.” She smiled and said, “But Dad had the last laugh. A million bucks for the acreage. Big money then.”
“Big money now.” I asked, “Have you inherited?”
“Not yet. But I’m squandering a trust fund.”
I asked, “Will you marry me?”
“No, but I’ll let you drive my BMW.”
“Slow down and turn left there.”
She turned, and we headed north again. She glanced at me and said, “I understood you were married.”
“Divorced.”
“Signed, sealed, and delivered?”
“I think so.” In truth, I didn’t remember getting my final discharge papers.
“I remember a story on TV … when you were hit … an attractive wife visiting the hospital with the mayor, the police commissioner … you remember that?”
“Not really. Heard about it.” I said, “Right and a quick left.”
We found ourselves on Lighthouse Road, and I said, “Go slow and we’ll read numbers.”
The small road, which led to Horton Point Lighthouse about a mile farther on, had a scattering of small houses on both sides, surrounded by vineyards.
We came to a pleasant brick cottage whose mailbox said “Wiley.” Beth stopped the car on the grass verge. “I guess this is it.”
“Probably. The phone book was full of Wileys, by the way. Probably old originals.”
We got out and went up a stone path to the front door. There was no bell and we knocked. We waited. There was a car parked under a big oak tree alongside the house, so we walked around to the side, then to the back.
A thin woman of about seventy wearing a flowered summer dress was puttering around in a vegetable garden. I called out, “Mrs. Wiley?”
She looked up from her garden, then came toward us. We met her on a patch of lawn between the house and the garden. I said, “I’m Detective John Corey. I phoned you last night. This is my partner, Detective Beth Penrose.”
She stared at my shorts, and I thought maybe my fly was open or something.
Beth showed Mrs. Wiley her badge case, and the lady seemed satisfied with Beth, but still uncertain about me.
I smiled at Margaret Wiley. She had clear gray eyes, gray hair, and a sort of interesting face with translucent skin; a face that reminded me of an old painting—not any particular painting, or artist, or style, just an old painting.
She looked at me and said, “You called very late.”
“I couldn’t sleep. This double murder kept me awake, Mrs. Wiley. I apologize.”
“I don’t suppose I want an apology. What can I do for you?”
“Well,” I said, “we were interested in the piece of land that you sold to the Gordons.”
“I think I told you all I know.”
“Yes, ma’am. You probably did. Just a few more questions.”
“Sit over here.” She led us to a grouping of green-painted Adirondack chairs beneath a weeping willow. We all sat.
The chairs, which had been popular when I was a kid, had made a big comeback, and you saw them all over now. These particular chairs in Mrs. Wiley’s yard, I suspected, had never been away so that a comeback wasn’t necessary. The house, the yard, the lady in the long cotton dress, the willow tree, the rusty swing set, and the old tire hanging by a rope from the oak tree—all of this had a 1940s or 1950s look, like an old photograph that had been color-tinted. Truly time moved more slowly here. There was a saying that in Manhattan the present was so strong, it obscured the past. But here, the past was so strong, it obscured the present.
I could smell the sea, the Long Island Sound, about a quarter mile away, and I thought I caught a whiff of the grapes that had fallen to the ground in the nearby vineyard. This was a unique environment of sea, farm, and vineyard, an unusual combination found only in a few places along the East Coast.
I said to Mrs. Wiley, “You have a beautiful place here.”
“Thank you.” Margaret Wiley was my third old person of the day, and I determined to do better with her than I had with Edgar and Agnes. In fact, Margaret Wiley wasn’t going to take any crap from me; I could sense that. She was the no-nonsense, old-family, get-to-the-point, and mind-your-manners type. I’m a good interrogator because I can pick out personalities and types, and tailor my approach accordingly. This doesn’t mean I’m simpatico, sensitive, or empathetic. I’m an over-bearing, egocentric, and opinionated male chauvinist pig. That’s my comfort zone. But I listen and I say what has to be said. It’s part of the job.
I said to Mrs. Wiley, “Do you manage this place by yourself?”
“Mostly. I have a son and two daughters, all married and living in the area. Four grandchildren. My husband, Thad, died six years ago.”
Beth said she was sorry.
That out of the way, Beth asked, “Do you own these vineyards?”
“I own some of this land. I lease it to the wine people. Regular farmer’s lease for a season. Wine people need twenty years, they say. I don’t know anything about grapevines.” She looked at Beth. “Does that answer your question?”
“Yes, ma’am.” Beth asked, “Why did you sell an acre to the Gordons?”
“What does that have to do with their murders?” Beth replied, “We don’t know until we find out more about the transaction.”
“It was a simple land sale.”
I said to Mrs. Wiley, “To be frank, ma’am, I find it odd that the Gordons spent so much money for land that couldn’t be developed.”
“I think I told you, Detective, they wanted a view of the Sound.”
“Yes, ma’am. Did they mention any other use they might want to make of the land? For instance, fishing, boating, camping?”
“Camping. They mentioned pitching a tent. And fishing. They wanted to surf cast at night from their own beach. They also said something about wanting to buy a telescope. They wanted to study astronomy. They’d visited the Custer Institute. Have you been there?”
“No, ma’am.”
“It’s a small observatory in Southold. The Gordons had taken an interest in astronomy.”
That was news to me. You’d think that people who looked at bugs through a microscope all day wouldn’t want another lens in their eye at night. But you never know. I asked, “And boating?”
“You can’t launch any boat from there, except maybe a canoe. The land is on a high bluff, and you couldn’t get anything except a canoe up there, then down to the beach.”
“But you could land a boat on the beach?”
“Maybe at high tide, but there are treacherous rocks along that stretch. You could probably anchor and swim or walk to the beach at low tide.”
I nodded, then asked, “Did they mention any agricultural interest in the land?”
“No. It’s not good for much. Didn’t I tell you that?”
“I don’t recall.”
“Well, I did.” She explained, “Whatever’s growing on that bluff took a long time to get used to the wind and the salt air.” She added, “You might try root vegetables on the landward side.”
“Right.” I tried another tack and inquired, “What was your impression of the Gordons?”
She looked at me, thought a moment, then replied, “A nice couple. Very pleasant.”
“Happy?”
“They seemed happy.”
“Were they
excited about their purchase?”
“You could say so.”
“Did they approach you about selling your land?”
“Yes. They made some inquiries first—I heard about that long before they came to me. When they asked me, I told them I wasn’t interested.”
“Why’s that?”
“Well, I don’t like to sell land.”
“Why not?”
“Land should be held and passed on to the family.” She added, “I’ve inherited some parcels through my mother’s side. This piece of land that the Gordons were interested in was from my husband’s side.” She seemed to reflect a moment, then added, “Thad made me promise not to sell any of it. He wanted it to go to the children. But this was only an acre. I didn’t really need the money, of course, but the Gordons seemed to have been heart-set on this bluff….” She glanced at me and Beth, and said, “I asked the children, and they thought that their father would approve.”
It always amazed me that widows and children, who were entirely clueless about what to get the old boy for Christmas or Father’s Day, knew exactly what the late great Pop would want after he popped off.
Mrs. Wiley continued, “The Gordons understood that the land couldn’t be developed.”
“You mentioned that.” I asked pointedly, “And for that reason, wouldn’t you agree that twenty-five thousand dollars was above market price?”
She leaned forward in the deep Adirondack chair and informed me, “I also gave them an easement through my land to theirs.” She added, “Let’s see what the land goes for when the estate sells it.”
“Mrs. Wiley, I’m not faulting you for making a good deal for yourself. I’m wondering why the Gordons wanted or needed that land so badly.”
“I told you what they told me. That’s all I know.”
“The view must be breathtaking for twenty-five big ones.”
“It is.”
I said, “You mentioned that you lease your farmland.”
“Yes. My children aren’t interested in farming or in grape-growing for the wineries.”
“Did that ever come up with the Gordons? I mean, about you leasing your farmland?”