“Laura! Shut your mouth!” Silas roared. “You know that woman. She’ll blast it everywhere.”
“You may tell everyone,” Laura repeated. “Add to it that I am going to gouge Mr. Williams with this butcher knife if he tries to build a fire in that damn wood stove.”
Silas groaned, half rose from his chair, Laura wheeled at the movement, the butcher knife ready. Silas sat down.
Cecilia’s lips twitched, struggling to hold back a grin. “Now, Mrs. Williams, surely you don’t mean that,” she said, her eyes round with delighted approval. “Especially with the dreadful news here this morning, you surely wouldn’t want another — well, another murder.”
Laura Williams moved to close the door and Cecilia’s words rushed to prevent it. “Little Joe Sykes found a woman’s foot on the beach this morning!”
The door froze. Silas grated a laugh. “Hear that, Laura? Woman’s foot. If you’re not careful there may be two of ’em before the day’s over. Both off the same side. Which is it, Cissy, left or right?”
Cecilia reached past Laura, grabbed the doorknob, and banged shut the door. She went down the steps, along the brick path to her car, got in it. “Damn him anyway! Old big-mouth Tony! Called me that to every Tom, Dick, and Harry. To my face, behind my back, down at the garage, everywhere! Sissy! The hell I am!” A lone skimpy tear trickled down her cheek. She swiped angrily at it, started up her car, and drove home.
In early afternoon she took another stand at her spyglass just in time to see two Sheriff’s cars drive up beside Hughie’s shack. A number of men got out of the cars, pulled out shovels and picks from the trunk compartments, and slowly walked toward the cliff’s edge. Cecilia wasted no time heading for the action.
From the cliff’s edge she watched Hughie, weighted to one side by his clam bucket, join the men. The deputies dropped their shovels and picks, pulled out cigarettes, offered one to Hughie, Hughie shaking his head. “Gabbing, wasting time,” she muttered.
She cupped her hands around her mouth and yelled, “Where’s your sand pails, kiddies?” The men looked around, waved good-naturedly.
A brush of sound behind her startled her. She whirled toward it. Joe Sykes’s big brute of a German Shepherd stood not more than five feet away, tongue lolling, still dragging the chain. Cecilia tensed, ready to kick, scream, or run. But the Shepherd stood, as tense as she was, flicking its gaze from the startled woman to the men on the beach.
Cecilia stamped her foot. “Git!” she ordered. The dog gave a nervous turn toward the highway, decided against it, took a few steps toward the cliff path. But Cecilia blocked it. The dog turned toward the men and began a precipitous slide down the almost sheer cliff.
The animal scrambled for control, fell sideways, and, yelping, tumbled over and over, the chain flinging against him and the cliff. He twisted sideways, trying to climb upward, and slid into a jut of earth covered with succulents some ten feet above the beach. The men laughed and snapped their fingers at the dog. The dog sat down and began licking a front foot.
Now the men tossed away their cigarettes, walked around, poking with their picks at the sandy earth high on the beach.
Above them the dog began scratching into the ledge that had caught his fall. He barked sharply, and Cecilia and the men turned to look at him. He whined, barked again, dug ferociously, hair standing in a ruff around his neck. Then he raised his head. As though in macabre greeting, a human hand dangled from his mouth.
The men rushed toward the dog, terrifying the animal. He leaped to the beach, dodged the men, and ran toward the blending of cliff into the valley, the shouts and the flinging chain urging him faster. He sped up the creek bed, the hand still in his mouth. And vanished.
The men turned back toward the ledge. A deputy stood on the shoulders of another man and scrambled onto the ledge. He dug into the succulents and came up with — merciful God, no! But there it was. An arm.
As in a nightmare ball game the deputy tossed the grisly object to the man below. The latter caught it and motioned toward Hughie’s clam bucket. Hughie shook his head, pointing to its contents. Then, as the deputy insisted, Hughie shrugged, upended the bucket, sloshing clams and sea water onto the sand. The deputy dropped the arm into the bucket.
“Nothing else here!” the man on the ledge shouted. “Could be scattered anywhere from here clear to San Looey!”
“Come on down and go call the office!” one of the men below shouted back. “Ask for more men. We’ll start tearing up this cliff.”
The deputy slid down, headed up the path. He shook his head chidingly as he passed Cecilia. “Ladies oughtn’t to be watching this. Gruesome.” He went to one of the cars and put in the call.
“Phooey!” Cecilia said under her breath. She focused on the beach again. Poor old Hughie was staring at his heap of clams scattered on the sand. He shrugged again, took off his sweater, revealing a yellowish long-sleeved undershirt spotted with holes. He scooped his clams onto the sweater, rolled it into a bundle, and trudged up the cliff path. At the top Cecilia stopped him.
“Hughie, like the deputy said this morning, you see anything odd around here? Like folks who ordinarily don’t come to the beach, or maybe strangers around? You’re the only one lives close enough to the beach to see things like that.”
He smiled sadly. “No strangers. Once in a while a child, like little Joe Sykes. But the rocks along here make swimming bad, and the fishing boats can’t put out. Mostly only Hughie, combing the beach.”
Her bright beady gaze bore into him. “That’s right,” she said. “Even for clams they don’t come here. There’s a better clamming beach a couple of miles south. Just you, Hughie.”
He surveyed her with aloof, wry sadness. “You think old Hughie killed a lady? Maybe for her pocketbook? I give up a fortune, my wife and my friends say I’m crazy, and I come down for peace and quiet in a shack on the beach. Because the world has no more dignity, no more respect, because it’s crazy for money and I’m sick of being crazy. So then Hughie finds some lady with a fat purse? Or maybe I’m a sex maniac. Did I ever treat you with anything but respect, Cecilia?”
A subtle aura of strength shone from the shabby man. She had a swift perceptive flash of past authority, hidden depth of power, which Sea Mount had whispered about but never quite believed.
“I didn’t say such a thing. Whatever gave you such an idea?”
“Mrs. Pigazzi, if you think such a thing you should mention it to the Sheriff’s men. Or I can.”
“Don’t be ridiculous!” she said angrily. Abruptly, with her irritation, he was merely Hughie again, ridiculous in ragged clothes and frayed tennis shoes.
Hughie smiled tentatively. “You’re very pretty when you’re mad. Rosy.”
“I’ll rosy you, twisting my words that way!”
“Oh, Cecilia, with all the sadness in the world, why should we fight? Especially here in Sea Mount, such a little place, but so few on friendly terms. I tell you, how would you like a good clam dinner tonight? I am happy to cook them, but it would be far better if you prepared them in your own beautiful way. My house is a poor place for a lady.”
“Come to my house,” she said briskly, mentally gauging when the fog would come in and darkness prevent binoculars from watching Hughie climb the slope to her house. “Make it no earlier than seven thirty. Now hurry, get another bucket, fill it with sea water — we don’t want these clams to die.” My God, everything around here is dying. I wonder how Laura and Silas are coming along?