A Show of Hands Page 8

  “Well, yes. Not too good, though,” said Leeman, almost apologetically. “There was just that half a second before the flashes all started going off. After that you couldn’t hardly see nothin’ but stars and spots.” He rubbed his eyes vigorously with the heel of his hand. “I still can’t hardly see now.”

  A respectable reservoir had formed behind their pokings. Crisp gently tapped a breach in the dam and the water coursed through, carrying the dam with it.

  “But you saw him. You saw the body,” Crisp repeated.

  “Oh, I saw the body, all right.” Leeman replied. “I sure did. I mean, you couldn’t recognize him or anything. Not just like that.” He snapped his fingers. “But, well, he hadn’t gone nowhere.” He paused to reflect. “You know what I think?”

  Crisp didn’t have to feign interest. He turned his good ear a little more toward the speaker. “What do you think, Leeman?”

  “Well,” Leeman said, “if Andy done it . . . I’m not sayin’ he did, I’m not sayin’ he didn’t. That’s what they got courts for. I can’t believe anyone would do such a thing, myself. I mean, we’re talkin’ about a human life here. That’s the kind of thing happens on the mainland where they ain’t got sense enough to know better. But if he did, you know, kill that girl, and then he dies a couple days later, how’d she get up to the quarry where Bergie found her?”

  He seemed unwilling to speculate further.

  “Frozen,” said Crisp, catalystically.

  “Frozen. That’s right. If he killed her, it must’ve been in August or September, or whenever, ’cause he was dead after that. Then she ends up frozen in the quarry. You was down to the poolroom when I told ’em how they found her, wasn’t you? Yes, ’course you was, I remember. Well, like I said, she was fresh as anything.” He raised his eyes and looked searchingly at Crisp. “How?” he said.

  Crisp shrugged.

  “It don’t make sense,” Leeman continued. “Somethin’ had to happen to her between when she was strangled and when she was put in the quarry. It don’t make sense. Does it to you, Professor? I mean, if Andy done it, it had to be done before he died. Didn’t it?”

  Crisp shook his head. There was a song in there somewhere, if not a poem. “Did they do anything else?”

  “Who?”

  Crisp nodded in the direction of the open grave.

  “Oh, them fellas? Well, one of them got down in there. He had these little plastic bags, you know like they put samwiches in?” He raised his hand and held an imaginary sandwich bag between his thumb and forefinger. “I guess they was collectin’ somethin’ outta there. Evidence, or somethin’, prob’ly. Hard to tell. There was a couple of ’em keepin’ us back, you know.”

  “What do you think might have been in the bags?”

  “Oh, I don’t really know,” said Leeman, lowering his hand. “I didn’t get much of a look when they went by. My eyes was still full of spots from them cameras. Somethin’ shiny. Buttons from the coat? That’s what it looked like.” He laughed. “Could’ve been mothballs, though, for all I know. Do they put mothballs in caskets?”

  The rain fell in crystal curtains that exploded on contact with the ground. One by one the small knots of onlookers untied themselves and the curious drifted to their cars—home to warm stoves, a hot meal, and a week’s worth of animated conversation. Leeman Russell and Crisp watched the last of them leave. “Some gosh awful,” Leeman said in requiem, “the whole darn business.”

  Kilby Miller’s old truck was parked at the edge of the grave, winking at the proceedings with its one dim eye. Against the soft yellow glow, Kilby’s silhouette tossed soggy shadows of dirt into

  the hole. Waymond’s silhouette was there, too, indifferent to the weather. Crisp couldn’t help wondering if somehow Waymond repelled rain the way he repelled people.

  Leeman glanced at his watch. “I guess I’d best be gettin’ home,” he said. “You got a ride, P’fessor?”

  Minutes later they were bumping down the road in Leeman’s Oldsmobile station wagon with Crisp’s bicycle stuck halfway out the rear door. Exhaust fumes wafted into the front seat.

  “I suppose you knew the Calderwood boys pretty well, Leeman,” Crisp said. He examined his companion’s features carefully in the glow of the dashboard lights. Leeman had a distinctive profile—a prominent Adam’s apple; a strong, jutting chin; deep-set eyes; a lower lip that pouted perpetually outward; a slightly receding hairline, graying at the temples; and what an old friend of Crisp’s in Washington would call a “passive” nose. Overall, a pleasant-looking fellow. Crisp wondered why he hadn’t been requisitioned by one of the island’s eligible womenfolk.

  Leeman kept his eyes on the road and both hands on the wheel.

  “I knew them well as anyone, I guess. Not what you’d call intimate, you know. But they were cousins back through my aunt Agatha somehow. You know Aggie Pease?” Crisp nodded. “Well, she’s my aunt. Back through her, somehow. I think she was a Calderwood. Half the island’s been Calderwoods one time or other.”

  “I don’t know much about the Calderwood boys,” said Crisp without a smile. “I saw them on the street now and again. I gather they were pretty wild, like most boys that age.”

  “Andy sure was a rough young fella,” said Leeman. “Not real bad, I wouldn’t say, but rough. Had arms on him like, well, I don’t know what. A gorilla or a football player. Real strong from pullin’ all them pots, you know. Never got in much trouble. Drunk a few times and fights and things like that. He wasn’t really bad, though, not . . . what’s the word? Intentional?”

  “Malicious?”

  “That’s right,” Leeman nodded. “I can think of plenty who’s worse. I guess that’s why it’s hard to figure him doin’ somethin’ like that.” He jerked his head in the general direction of the cemetery. “I mean, it had to be somebody, like I said, but . . .

  “He came from a good family.” They pulled into Matty’s driveway. “Besides, he was goin’ with Tessy Noble. They was engaged and everything and . . .” He paused, and his eyes bounced self-consciously from the console to Crisp and back to the console again.

  “And?”

  Leeman looked out the driver’s window through the rain. “From what I hear she wasn’t makin’ him wait for the weddin’ night to seal the deal, if you get my drift.”

  Crisp looked out his window. “Oh, I see,” he said. “So, he wouldn’t be likely to . . . it’s not as if—”

  “Yes. That’s right,” Leeman replied, glad the professor knew how to carry on a conversation without using bald words. “I mean, if you got the run of the candy store . . .”

  Crisp nodded out his window. Leeman nodded out his. “He was pretty tall, wasn’t he?” said Crisp.

  “I can tell you exactly how tall he was,” said Leeman. “Six foot three and a half.”

  Crisp was surprised. “You sound awfully sure.”

  “Oh, I am,” said Leeman. This mystery thing could run both ways. “I’m manager of the basketball team.” He grinned. “I like to help out up to the school if I can. They got hardly any budget these days. Well, one of the things I do is get all them figures for the yearbook. Statistics, you know. Andy was the tallest one on the team.”

  “Six three, you say?”

  Leeman nodded. “And a half.”

  “And a half.” Crisp mused. “About an inch and a half taller than I am.”

  For a moment the only noise was the loud rain on the roof.

  “What about the other one, Andy’s brother?”

  Leeman faced the dashboard again and began running his fingers over the station buttons on the radio. “Herbie.”

  “Herbie,” Crisp echoed. “Pretty much the same?”

  Leeman didn’t think so. “He was a lot smaller,” he said. “Not quite as tall, or so rugged, you know? A lot lighter, too. ’Course, that ain’t much of a surprise ’cause him an’ Andy had different mothers.”

  “Oh?” said Crisp. “I didn’t know that. Different mothers, you say?”


  “Andy’s ma died of leukemia or some sickness like that. Maybe cancer.”

  “Leukemia is a form of cancer.”

  “Well, that must be what it was, then,” said Leeman. “Anyway, that was back when I was fifteen or so. Andy was just goin’ into school when I graduated, so I guess he would’ve been, oh, two or three when his ma died. Prob’ly never knew her.”

  “And his father remarried?”

  “Woman from Stonington,” said Leeman. “They had Herbie.”

  “So there was, what, four or five years between them?”

  “If that,” said Leeman. “She was five or six months gone by the time they got legal.”

  “Honeymoon rehearsals, eh?” said Crisp.

  Leeman sniffed a note of irony. “That’s what happens, ain’t it?”

  They agreed this was so.

  “Some piano player, though.”

  “Herbie?”

  “Yup. He lived up there near Gustav Hobartsen, you know?”

  “The concert pianist?”

  Leeman nodded and smiled. “My mother says she used to beat him up when they was kids.”

  “Hobartsen?”

  “Yup. She figures that’s prob’ly why he left the island. Then he goes off and gets world famous.” Leeman looked at him confidentially. “He is, you know.”

  Crisp did know. “And Herbie learned from him?”

  “He was gettin’ good, too,” said Leeman. “Not that I know much about piano playin’, but it sounded some good to me. He’d play up at the gym for school concerts and the alumni banquet. That kind of thing. But I bet he could’ve played Carnegie Hall or one’ve them places. He did play over to the Community Center in Rockland once. They announced it on the radio and everything.”

  “That good?”

  Leeman raised his eyebrows and nodded.

  They sat quietly for another moment. The engine purred unobtrusively, with only a sputter at irregular intervals to verify its existence. Leeman picked at his cuticles while the rain came down steadily, tracing brief white lines through the broad beams of the headlights; slapping itself to splinters on the roof. There were shadows in the dining room window. Matty had guests.

  “Well,” said Crisp with a slap at his knees. “Thanks for the ride, Leeman. I’d probably have drowned otherwise.”

  They got out and Leeman helped him extricate his bicycle from the trunk. “Goshdarn seat’s caught on the lip there,” he said. “I never seen a seat like that, Pr’fessor. Big as a sofa. Most English bikes have them little seats that crawl up where the sun don’t shine. It didn’t come like that, did it?”

  “No,” said Crisp as they lowered the bicycle to the ground. “As a matter of fact, I got it last Fourth of July at the white elephant table. Fifty cents.”

  “Well, I wish I had one of ’em,” said Leeman. “I got one’ve them French racing bikes—ten speed. Goes some wicked fast. But I don’t hardly ever ride it ’cause I got hemorrhoids, you know?” He patted the thick foam-padded leather seat appreciatively. “You ever have hemorrhoids, Pr’fessor?” Crisp hoped it was a rhetorical question. It was. “Some ol’ painful, I tell you. Puts that bicycle right off limits.” Leeman patted the seat again. “Now, if I had a seat like that, I’d be able to take ’er out, see? Get a little exercise and lose some’ve this weight I gained over the winter.”

  If not for the fact they were both soaked to the skin already, one or the other of them might have been in a rush to get out of the rain. Neither was.

  “ ’Course, it looks awful out of place.”

  “I suppose it does.”

  “Wouldn’t look so funny on one of them high-risers like the kids have, instead of them banana seats,” said Leeman.

  Crisp didn’t know what a high-riser was. “Hmm.”

  “They’re a lot heftier.” Leeman slammed the rear door closed a few times until the latch caught. “I guess when you get to a certain age, you don’t much worry what you look like anymore,” he said philosophically.

  Crisp couldn’t think of anything to say in response. “Good night, Leeman.”

  “ ’Night,” said Leeman. He got in his car and backed out of the driveway. Crisp stood in the rain, resting a hand on the bicycle seat, and watched the Oldsmobile drive away. He wheeled the bike to the granite steps, leaned it against the latticework under the porch, and went inside.

  He stood in the small entry hall and took off his boots, coat, and hat. Through clear spaces in the beveled glass of the frosted windows in the parlor door, he saw Matty busily laying out coffee and muffins. Their warm aroma made its way through the prevailing cloud of early spring dampness. Cranberry and rhubarb. He wasn’t willing to subject himself to the scolding he’d get if she saw him in his present condition. He didn’t turn on the light.

  There were three coats on the pegs behind the door. The dry one was Matty’s. The others were as sodden as his own. He smiled, hung up his coat carefully, took off his socks, and waited, watching at the door for Matty to take her departure while his feet froze to the linoleum. It would be a short wait. She never stayed long in one place.

  The moment she left he opened the door with all the stealth his shivering hands could muster, closed it softly behind him, and tiptoed across the cold wooden floor to the braided rug by the fireplace. From there it was a hop, skip, and wobble to the hallway runner.

  “Coffee’s ready!” Matty called from the kitchen.

  Just as he got to the bottom of the stairs, two men came through the double doors that led to the living room. One of them was Nate Gammidge. He held out his hand. “Hello, Professor!” he said warmly. “I wondered if we were going to . . . what?”

  Crisp had held a silencing finger to his lips, mouthed some words neither of them could make out, and hobbled up the stairs like a tardy husband.

  Nate Gammidge looked at his companion, shook his head, and laughed. “Dark doings,” he said as they walked down the hall

  toward the parlor. “That’s the fellow I was telling you about. Interesting character.”

  Safely in his room, Crisp draped his wet clothes over the radiator, sponged down in his private half bath, toweled himself off, and climbed inside some warm, dry clothes. Minutes later he joined the other guests over coffee and muffins. Nate’s companion had been introduced as Alfred Hanson, medical examiner from the attorney general’s office.

  “Well, Professor,” said Nate, “looks like you were right about that makeup.”

  “Makeup? Oh, yes. Old, was it?”

  “Made in the early thirties, according to the lab in Augusta. Like you said.”

  Crisp sipped his coffee and nodded. He took a bite of muffin and refused to say what Gammidge seemed to expect him to say. Gammidge looked at Hanson. “The professor said it was old makeup.” Hanson nodded. “He was kind of a chemist,” Gammidge continued. Hanson nodded and turned his attention to the fire. “Kind of a chemist in your day, weren’t you, Professor?”

  Crisp smiled a smile of agreement. Gammidge sighed deeply and swallowed half a cup of coffee at a draught. Must be a trick to carrying on a three-way conversation by oneself. “Hot in here,” he said, tugging at his collar. “You got the suntan oil right, too, didn’t he, Alfred?”

  Without moving his head, Hanson raised his eyes from the fire and looked wearily at Gammidge. “That’s official information, Mr. Gammidge,” he said.

  “But he was the one who—”

  Hanson turned to Crisp. “I don’t mean any disrespect, Mr. Crisp. I don’t want to come across as Inspector Lestrade to your Sherlock Holmes, but this is a very delicate business, for a lot of reasons. Very delicate.” His eyes amplified his meaning. “Already, in accommodating your requests, Mr. Gammidge has considerably overstepped both his professional and political bounds, and not without jeopardy to his career, I might add.”

  Gammidge didn’t raise his eyes during the monologue. Nor did he raise them now. He turned the gold and silver wedding band nervously around his finger. Hanson continued. />
  “No doubt life in retirement gets dull for someone with your talents and . . . imagination. I suppose life on an island would be especially so. Be that as it may, this unfortunate girl’s death—”

  “Murder,” Crisp corrected.

  Hanson nodded once. “. . . is best handled by professionals. Surely you see the logic in this.”

  “I do indeed,” said Crisp, whose expression betrayed nothing. “As you say, it’s a delicate case.”

  “I don’t think you know how delicate,” said Hanson.

  “That may be,” Crisp replied. “That may be. But it’s mighty interesting, from an amateur’s point of view.”

  “Oh, I don’t know that it’s so out of the ordinary as to trouble about, Professor,” said Hanson, dismissing Crisp’s curiosity.

  Gammidge finally raised his eyes, more than a little startled by this appraisal. “Not out of the—!”

  Hanson raised his hand and Gammidge fell to earth like a stung duck.

  “Well,” said Crisp quietly, with a smile, “your experience is a good deal broader than mine if you don’t think finding a dead man’s fingerprints on Amanda Murphy’s neck doesn’t fall a little out of the ordinary.”

  It was Hanson’s turn to be startled. Immediately he turned on Gammidge. “I thought you were told—”

  “I didn’t!” Gammidge protested against the unspoken accusation. “I didn’t say anything! He just figured it out.”

  Crisp poured another cup of coffee. Normally, Matty wouldn’t let him have two, because caffeine seemed to make him sleep poorly, and when he didn’t sleep well he had nightmares. In the absence of her iron will, he found his own no match for the temptation. “Stuffy told me.”

  “Stuffy? Stuffy who?”

  “Just a town character,” Gammidge explained. “Harmless.”

  “You’ve never played cribbage with him,” Crisp said with a smile.

  Hanson flushed. He glared at Gammidge. “So, everyone in town knows the whole business?”

  “I didn’t breathe a word!” Gammidge defended.

  “I can’t believe that something this . . . this—”

  “Sensitive?” said Crisp.