“Then why did he call me first, to ease the shock? Why didn’t he just barge in on her — or better still, call her husband?”
Sharon O’Connell lit a cigarette. “Maybe he did call Jack. He was in town last night, remember. Jack could have killed him.”
Paul tried to examine his current brother-in-law objectively. Yes, he could imagine Jack Winegood committing murder; but would he have shot Ralph Jennings, a man he’d never met, as soon as Ralph opened the door of his room? “I doubt it,” he told Sharon.
“Then it gets back to Helen, doesn’t it? There’s no one else he would have called.”
“I’ll talk to her,” Paul said. “Tomorrow.”
“I’m driving back to Fire Island tonight, if you want to come along.”
“Sure,” he decided suddenly. “Helen and Jack have a guest room. I’ll stay with them overnight.”
The ride out was uneventful, and he began to regret having left his own car in town. Now he’d be stranded out there till Jack drove in sometime the following day, and he didn’t know just when that might be.
“Looks like rain,” Sharon said on the ferry, glancing up at the stars as they gradually faded from view behind a curtain of clouds.
“Summer storm. In another month we’ll be having hurricanes.”
“You’re a dreamer, Paul. You always were. Only most of your dreams are nightmares.” She gazed out at the rippling waters. “Why don’t you get married and settle down?”
“Is that a proposal, or are you just filling in for Helen with the kid-sister bit?”
“Neither one. I like you, that’s all.”
“You liked Ralph, too,” he reminded her, awaiting her reaction.
“Sure I did. I liked a lot of guys back in those days.”
“What was it about Ralph? Why didn’t you two ever hit it off?”
She turned her eyes toward him, just for an instant. “Maybe Helen came along. That’s what you wanted me to say, wasn’t it?”
“No.”
“Maybe I left those kids alone last night, and took the ferry in myself. Maybe I killed him, because he’d come back to Helen again. That’s what you’re thinking, isn’t it?”
“No.”
“Damn you, Paul Conrad! You never change, do you?”
“How should I change? Should I go away and disappear for five years, like Ralph did? Should I jump over the side right now?”
They were mostly silent for the rest of the trip across, and Sharon left him before he reached his sister’s cottage. It was night on Fire Island, but it was a Friday night, and there were parties in progress in some of the cottages. He found Helen and Jack alone on their porch with tall glasses clinking of ice cubes, and he settled into a chair opposite them.
“Can you put me up for the night?” he asked Helen. “I’ll ride in with Jack tomorrow.”
“Sure. How’d you get out here?”
“Sharon drove me. I ran into her at the police station.”
“Anything new?” Helen asked.
“Jack probably knows as much as I do.”
Jack Winegood shifted in his wicker chair. “The police think it might have been a sneak thief who thought the room was empty and panicked when he found Jennings there.”
“Sure. Guys come back from the dead every day to get killed by hotel thieves.”
Winegood shrugged. “Stranger things have happened.”
“Jack, get Paul a drink, will you? We’ve been sitting here talking and he doesn’t even have a glass.”
Winegood mumbled something and disappeared into the cottage. It was the chance for which Paul had been waiting. He stared into the darkness at the glowing tip of his sister’s cigarette. “Sharon says you were away from here last night.”
“What? Oh, I guess I went up to the store for something.”
“Are you in trouble, Helen?” he asked, wishing he could see her face more clearly.
“Why should I be?”
“You’d have been in trouble if Ralph had lived. You’d have had one husband more than allowed.”
“So I’d have hired myself a good lawyer.”
“Helen... I don’t think I ever asked you this before. Did you still love Ralph when he disappeared?”
“He was the father of my children.”
“But did you still love him?”
The screen door slammed and Jack Winegood reappeared with Paul’s drink. “Hope you felt like gin, boy. The Scotch is all gone.”
“Fine.” He wondered how much of the conversation Helen’s husband had heard, but he didn’t particularly care.
“You’d better get some sleep if you’re driving in with me tomorrow. I have to be at the station by nine.”
“I’ll be ready.”
He sipped his drink, tasting the burning coolness of the gin going down. When Helen and Jack went in to bed, he decided to stay up for a while longer, and strolled down the beach with his glass, feeling the warmth of the sand as it sifted into his shoes. There was a moon now, and the threat of a storm had passed. He remembered Sharon, and headed for the cottage where she was staying, but there was a party going on there. A girl who might have been Sharon was laughingly fighting off a shadowy young man on the front steps.
Paul felt old and tired and went back to his bed.
By noon on Saturday he was back at the police station, seeking out the young detective who’d questioned him. The man’s name was Rivers, and he remembered Paul with a casual greeting. He was still well-dressed, but this time he didn’t offer Paul any coffee.
“You’ve remembered something else, Mr. Conrad?” he asked pleasantly.
“Not exactly. I just had an idea that might help you.”
“Oh? What’s that?”
“Well, if Ralph’s killer wasn’t just a sneak thief — if it was someone who knew Ralph was still alive and back in New York — then Ralph must have phoned him as he did me. Hotels and motels keep a record of calls made by guests, don’t they?”
The detective smiled slightly. “They usually record the total number of local calls made, and the individual telephone numbers in the case of long-distance calls.”
“Then you can check—”
“We have checked, Mr. Conrad.”
“Well?”
“Ralph Jennings placed only one call from his room, and that would have been the local call to you. It looks as if you were the only person who knew he was still alive.”
After that, Paul had one more angle to try — the nagging suspicion that something other than Helen had kept Ralph in hiding during the past five years. Something else, and that something else just might have been an illicit undertaking of some sort. He’d always been suspicious of the amount of time Jennings spent on the boat with Oat Finley.
He found Jack Winegood at the station, checking the news ticker for the latest out of Washington. “I was wondering if you could help me, Jack. You’ve got an in with the police.”
His brother-in-law blinked and put down the yellow sheet of news bulletins. “What do you want?”
“Can you find out if a man named Oat Finley has a police record? Either here or in New Jersey?”
“Finley? Wasn’t he on that boat with Jennings five years ago?”
“That’s right. He lives out on Staten Island now.”
“You’re trying to solve this murder all by yourself, aren’t you? Mind telling me why?”
“I’d rather not, Jack.”
Winegood studied him a moment longer. “Look, I didn’t want to mention it in the car coming in this morning... I guess maybe you and I haven’t been the closest of friends, but I heard part of your conversation with Helen last night. I know you’re doing this for her, and I appreciate it.”
“Then you’ll check on Oat Finley?”
“Wait in my office. If he has a record in New York City, I can get the information over the telephone. New Jersey will be tougher.”
Paul went into the office where he’d met with Winegood just twenty-four hours earlier, when both of them were still shocked by the news of Ralph’s reappearance and murder. He dropped into one of the sticky leather armchairs and lit a cigarette, prepared for a lengthy wait while Winegood was busy on the phone. The office was a reflection of the man, drab and ordinary, with occasional flashes of interest in the form of framed and autographed pictures. A former mayor, a current senator — the newsmakers. On his desk was a paperweight in the shape of a microphone.