“Oh, dear.”
I was surprised at the strength of his reaction. The loss was obviously still quite fresh, as it might be with a sibling or a parent, or a lover. “When did she work here?”
“She quit three Aprils ago, at the beginning of the same summer she died. She said she planned to spend the whole season outside, just to prove you could get as good a tan in Brattleboro as you could in the Bahamas. She said she’d be like a billboard for the suntan lotions I sell here.” His voice died with a murmur and he sat tiredly on the stool behind him.
“It sounds like you were very close.”
He looked up and smiled, but he took a long time answering.
“I think we were friends. That’s rare for someone my age.”
I remembered from Peg’s file that Kimberly was raking in cash by the time she left Charlie’s. “She must have saved a bundle to take the whole summer off.”
Again, he hesitated, but this time he merely seemed pensive.
“I never thought of that.”
“How long did she work here?”
“Just under a year. She came in for some lotion. I think if she had a vain spot, it was her skin-of course, it was quite beautiful. Anyway, I had a sign in the window asking for help and she took the job, right on the spot. She worked out very well.”
“Why did she leave?”
“I don’t know.” Again the long pause. “She never told me.”
“Do you think she was happy working here?”
“I thought so. She always said that. I believed her.”
I felt like I was eavesdropping on a man talking to himself. “Did she ever come back to visit after she’d left?”
“No. I saw her once, on the street, but she didn’t see me. She was very much her own person.”
“What do you mean?”
He was sitting slumped on the stool, his eyes on a far corner of the room, his hands on his knees like two carefully placed artifacts. I felt I had a gold mine of information here-the first person who could tell me what Kimberly Harris had been like in life-and yet I sensed I would end up with little to show for it. He was staring, self-absorbed, into a private pool of grief. The facts of his relationship with Kimberly Harris, what I most wanted to hear, were as immaterial to him as the dawn of the next century.
“What did you say?” he asked.
“You said she was very much her own person. What did you mean by that?”
“She was very private, very much in control. She seemed to have a great deal of purpose in life.”
“Did she ever talk about her past?”
“Not once. I’m afraid I cornered the market there, like most old men.” div height="0em"›
“Did she have any friends? People who would come in and visit, or maybe people she’d see after hours?” He shook his head. “No. I don’t know what she did with her spare time. Weekends were special, but I don’t know why.”
“How do you mean, ‘special’?”
“Towards the end of her stay here, she began asking for three-day weekends. I was happy to oblige because she always made up for the lost time immediately. To be honest, I put that sign in the window for temporary help; I don’t do enough business to justify a full-time employee. So her weekends were no burden to me.”
“She never said what she did during those times?”
“I never asked. I wanted to be her friend, not her guardian. She sensed that-at least I think she did.”
“Would you be able to pinpoint those weekends?”
He hovered closer to earth-the lure of a physical reality. “Of course. I have time sheets for all my employees-even for myself. It would take a little time to dig them up, though. I could do it tonight after closing, if that’s all right.”
“That’s fine. I’d appreciate it. By the way, did the police interview you at the time of her death?”
“Yes. I’m not sure I was much help then, either.”
“You’ve been a help. It’s difficult talking about someone you loved who’s died.”
It was a long shot and it missed. He focused on me very carefully, a man on the alert. “I didn’t say I loved her. I was fond of her. Her death was a waste.”
“Of course. I’m sorry-I misunderstood. I might be gone for the next couple of days, but I’ll be back to pick up those time sheets, okay?”
He smiled, but there was less friendliness in his eyes. “I’ll have them ready.”
I left the store and began walking back up Main Street to the Municipal Building, swathed in the gloomy pre-evening winter light. I was not happy. It might have been last night catching up with me, or the frustration of tiptoeing through my own department with a major case, but Rubin’s coolness at the end made me feel I was increasingly surrounded by a bunch of people who’d just as soon see me disappear. That was starting to wear thin.
It was also about to change. Every rock I’d looked under had concealed more old, unanswered questions. So far, I’d found a dubious medical examiner, a career peeper, a clue-cluttered crime scenario, anonymous cash payments, mysterious three-day weekends; and now I’d just left a squeaky-clean septuagenarian with a did-he-or-didn’t he passion for the victim. None of these had been brought up before that I had ever heard, and I was beginning to think that if I couldn’t get at least one of them to lay me a nice fat egg, I was in the wrong line of work.
Of course, the largest question remained: if I did end up proving I was in the right line of work, who in the end was going to benefit? Ski Mask had set an elaborate plan into action, but what was his motivation? It was difficult to believe he’d put so meing, any people through hell-not to mention causing the death of one of them-just to get Bill Davis off the hook. I had to assume that his interest was more in who he thought should be in Davis’s place. But that still didn’t give me much.
I spent the waning hours of the day doodling in my office, going over what I’d found, making charts on a large yellow pad. I made everyone I could think of Kimberly Harris’s killer and then tied him to what I knew. Of course, I ended up with mostly question marks. But the process was comforting and it helped kill the time. Tomorrow, with the trip to Connecticut, I felt things were going to change. I would stop turning over old earth and start digging in a patch of my own.
Most bachelors have their quirks, I suppose. Mine-at least one of mine-is to shop for food almost every day on the way home. The logic is that the larder rarely ends up holding unopened passing fancies that slowly graduate to botulism growth farms. But in fact I think I do it just to spend a few minutes of each day among the normal people of this world. Some men have their six o’clock martinis: I have my fifteen minutes in the crowded aisles of Finast.
I had parked my car after returning from this ritual and was crossing the street to my apartment, grocery sack in one hand, keys in the other, when I heard my name called. Frank Murphy was standing in the shadows under a tree.
“You don’t look too good.”
“It’s been a couple of action-packed days.”
“I won’t argue with that.” He climbed the steps to the front door with me, glancing at the bag. “You had dinner yet?”
“No.”
He put his hand on my shoulder. “Come home with me. Martha’s fixing lasagna-right up your alley.”
“No. I’m bushed. I don’t think I’ll bother with dinner.”
“Sleep on an empty stomach? You’d never wake up. Come on, you don’t have to be sociable. I won’t even mind if you fall asleep at the table, but you got to eat.”
I shook my head again, but he tightened his grip. I looked up at him.
“Please. As a favor.”
He had more than dinner on his mind. “All right.”
I walked back down the steps with him, crossed over to his car and deposited my groceries in the back seat. That’s one advantage of Vermont winters-all the world is a refrigerator, especially if your car heater works like Murphy’s.
We’d been driving for five minutes before he spoke again. “So, any ideas?”
“Why the sudden interest?”
It came out sharper than I’d intended, and Frank lapsed back into silence. I didn’t want to be doing this. I needed rest and some time alone to think things out.