“Herb’s a moron.”
“A lot of loose grass clippings,” she complains to him, but she doesn’t look around. She looks at me. “You know how much I don’t like that. Please make sure you rake the rest of them up. I don’t care if they’re good fertilizer.”
“Hadn’t finished. Wasn’t expecting you home so soon. I think it’s time to hire a yard man.”
“Why don’t you get us some water and some of those cookies I baked. And I’ll give our visitors a tour.”
“Colin? While I look at the garden, what’s left of it, maybe you can give Benton a message for me,” I say to him, but I don’t take my eyes off her, and I know Colin senses something is wrong.
I give him Benton’s cell phone number.
“Maybe you could let him know he and his colleagues really need to see what Robbi has done to her garden, converting the old root cellar into a remarkably functional office, unlike anything I’ve ever seen. Robbi for Roberta, let me guess,” I say to Colin, as I look at her, and I can hear him on his phone.
“Yes, in the backyard,” Colin says quietly, but he doesn’t recite the address or where we are, and I suspect that Benton might already be on the way.
“It’s exactly what I’d like to do at home, build an office in back that’s as secure as Fort Knox, an area where maybe gold once was kept before it was stolen,” I say to Roberta Price’s face. “With backup power and special ventilation, plenty of privacy and security cameras I could monitor from my desk. Or better yet, remotely. Keeping an eye on who comes and goes. If you don’t mind my husband and his colleagues dropping by,” I say to Roberta, as the kitchen door shuts, and I wonder if Colin is armed.
“Price or Mullery?” I ask her. “You probably took your husband’s name, Mullery. Dr. and Mrs. Mullery in a lovely historic house that must hold special memories for you,” I tell her stonily, as I’m vaguely aware of a loud engine in the distance.
She steps closer to me and stops. I see her anger seething because she’s finished and she knows it, and I again wonder if Colin is armed and I wonder if she is, and while I’m wondering about all of this I’m worried most about the husband boiling out of the house with his nine-millimeter. If Colin points a gun at Roberta or tackles her to the ground, he very well might end up beaten to death or shot, and I don’t want Colin shooting Gabe Mullery, either.
“When your husband comes out of the house,” I say to her, as Colin moves closer to us, “you need to tell him the police are coming. The FBI is on the way even as we speak. You don’t want him getting hurt, and he’ll get hurt if you do anything rash. Don’t run. Don’t do anything, or he’ll get in the middle. He won’t understand.”
“You won’t win.” She slips her hand inside her shoulder bag, and her eyes are glassy. She is breathing hard, as if she is extremely agitated or about to attack, and the sound of the loud engine is close, a motorcycle, as her husband emerges from around the side of the house, carrying bottles of water and a plate.
“Take your hand out of your bag. Slowly,” I tell her, as the engine roars close and suddenly stops. “Don’t do anything that makes us do something.”
“Looks like we got more company.” Her husband strides across a yard strewn with fresh grass cuttings, and he drops the bottles and the plate as Roberta Price withdraws her hand from her purse and she’s holding a canister that is boot-shaped and white, and a gunshot explodes near the house.
She takes one step and drops to the ground, blood streaming out of her head, an asthma inhaler nearby on the grass, and Lucy is running across the yard, a pistol gripped in both hands as she shouts at Gabe Mullery not to move.
“Sit down nice and slow.” Lucy keeps the pistol aimed at him as he stands in his backyard, shocked.
“I’ve got to help her,” he cries out. “For God’s sake, let me help her!”
“Sit down!” Lucy yells, as I hear car doors shut. “Keep your hands where I can see them!”
TWO DAYS LATER
The bell in City Hall’s gold-domed tower rings in slow, heavy clangs on a hazy Independence Day that won’t include fireworks for some of us. It’s Monday, and while the plan was to get out early for the long flight home, it’s already noon.
By the time we land at Hanscom Air Force Base west of Boston it will be eight or nine p.m., our delay not due to the weather but to the winds of Marino’s moods, which are gusting in fits and starts and constantly changing direction. He insisted on returning his cargo van to Charleston, where he wants us to land en route, in case he decides to return home with us, because he’s not sure, he said. He might stay down here in the Lowcountry and do some fishing or thinking, and he might look for a preowned johnboat or decide to take a sabbatical, as he put it. He might end up back in Massachusetts, it was hard to say, and as he deliberated over what he should do with himself he discovered other ways to stall.
He needed more coffee. He might make one last run for steak-and-egg biscuits he can’t get up north. He should go to the gym. He should return the rented motorcycle to the dealership so Lucy doesn’t have to do it. She’s been through enough with all the police and FBI interviews, all the red tape, as he put it, that goes with a shooting, and it’s a bad feeling to kill someone and realize the person wasn’t reaching for a weapon but a wallet or driver’s license or an inhaler. Even when the dirtbag deserved it, you’d rather it didn’t go down like that, because someone’s always going to question your judgment, he went on and on, and that’s what stresses you out more than having the person dead, if you’re honest about it. He didn’t want Lucy on a motorcycle right now, and began worrying about her flying because of what he imagines is her state of mind.
Lucy is fine. It’s Marino who’s not. He ran errand after errand, and when at last he was ready to set out for the two-hour drive to Charleston, he decided he wanted all the provisions I’d bought, which can’t fit in the helicopter anyway, he pointed out. Not that I’d planned on hauling extra pots and pans and canned foods and a butane two-burner stovetop all the way back to New England, but he insisted he have them. He hasn’t had a chance to set up his new place in Charleston, he explained, as he piled everything he could find into boxes he got from a liquor store, including open bags of chips and trail mix and used containers and bottles of cleansers and hand-washing detergent, even a travel hair dryer he doesn’t need for his bald head and a travel iron and ironing board he’ll never use on his synthetic blends.
He grabbed spices, and several almost-empty jars of olives, pickles, relishes, and fruit preserves, and a banana, condiments and crackers, paper napkins, plastic silverware and plates, foil wrap, a stack of folded shopping bags. Then he went from room to room and gathered up the hotel toiletries as if he’s turned into a hoarder.
“Like those pickers or whatever they’re called on TV,” I decide. “Digging through other people’s cast-offs and junk and never throwing anything out. This is a new compulsion.”
“Fear,” Benton says, a computer notebook in his lap, his phone on the table next to his chair. “Afraid he might get rid of something or lose sight of it and then he needs it.”
“Well, I’m texting him again. No excuses, he’s coming home with us. I don’t want him down here by himself when he’s not thinking clearly and in the throes of some new compulsion. We’re landing in Charleston, no matter what he says, and if need be, I’ll go to his condo and haul him out of there.”