“I don't think he trusted her.”
“What makes you say that?”
“He asked me to make inquiries regarding a private investigator.”
“Why?”
“The usual. He suspected she had a new lover. Someone who might prove a bad influence on Ashley. Someone who could cause trouble.”
Ms. Stone pauses again, like she heard what she just said.
“Perhaps,” she says, “Mr. Hart was correct.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
“Let's take a walk.”
We're on the sandy concrete sidewalk outside Chesterfield's. The sun is already so hot and bright that the pavement sizzles and any gum you step on is going to be gooey and stretchy like pizza cheese.
Ceepak heads toward the end of the street where pressure-treated planks lead up to the boardwalk paralleling the beach.
“Where we going?” I ask, trying to catch up. The man does not walk at a leisurely pace
“Tilt-A-Whirl.”
“Are you planning on telling me what the hell is going on sometime today?”
“I did. We're walking over to the Tilt-A-Whirl.”
Ceepak is acting like the asshole big brother I never actually had. The one who thinks he's so clever, doing some kind of Three Stooges “nyuck-nyuck-nyuck” hand wave in your face. Some seagulls caw and chitter. They think Ceepak is fucking hilarious.
“That's not what I mean,” I say as we hustle down the boardwalk. All sorts of interesting walkers and joggers come at us, pass us, move up and down the wonderfully level span overlooking the sand and surf. I feel totally out of shape. First, Ceepak walks too damn fast. Second, all these other people look healthy and fit as they speed-walk or run past in their color-coordinated exercise outfits. Third, I drank six beers in sixty minutes flat only about seven hours ago and, like I said, the sun is bright and hot and my armpits bring to mind a cheap brewery.
Ceepak dashes down a short set of stairs and onto the sand. He takes the steps two at a time, swinging from the handrails like a giddy kid. I follow him, trying not to trip, stumble, or fall.
“‘This train?’” Ceepak shouts over his shoulder. “‘Faith will be rewarded!’”
He's quoting another Springsteen song. “Land of Hope and Dreams.” It's not really on any studio album, but Bruce sings it live all the time.
I still have no idea where the hell any of this is leading except, of course, to the chain-link fence surrounding the Tilt-A-Whirl.
Ceepak points to the bushes where I first found the needles and other drug paraphernalia.
“Maybe Squeegee was here. Maybe he came here all the time, especially when it was raining, to shoot up his drugs. Heroin, mostly. He could have been in those bushes, sleeping it off. Then, all of a sudden, he hears a gun go off. Seven, eight, nine shots. Lot of noise. Only Squeegee doesn't pop up right away. He's groggy. Did some heavy-duty smack the night before. He's half-awake, half-asleep when he hears the fence rattling.”
Ceepak kicks the bottom of the fence. It shimmies and rattles and pings against its poles. It'd get me out of bed.
“Maybe he finally sits up. He looks toward the beach, expecting to see the cop who gives him his wake-up call most mornings. Only this particular morning, he sees a lady wearing sunglasses and a scarf and smoking a cigarette. A sweet-smelling cigarette. The sea breeze? It blows that fragrant smoke right up at him and he thinks it smells like something he made for his mother once, for her to hang in the closet. A clove pomander.”
What do you know-Squeegee and I have at least one thing in common-we both made stinky gifts for our moms.
Ceepak points to people and things that aren't there, but I start to see them. He walks over to the trapdoor buried in the sand.
“Maybe he sees this same lady bend down and pull a pistol out of this hole. A pistol just like this one.”
Ceepak pulls out his Smith amp; Wesson.
“Maybe the next time Mr. Jerry Shapiro, a.k.a. Squeegee, is shown such a weapon he says, ‘Yeah, that's like what she had.’ And, he says the lady was wearing white gloves.”
Ceepak snaps open his pants pocket and pulls out a pair of those lint-free evidence gloves.
“‘Like these?’ I ask. ‘Yeah. Like those,’ he says.”
No wonder he was up in Room 215 so long last night. He and Squeegee had quite the conversation.
“The lady's smart. She's not leaving any fingerprints on the murder weapon. Then our witness? He hears the lady whisper something. ‘We need to talk!’”
“Is the lady whispering this to Squeegee?”
“No. He thought so at first. Apparently, some of his recreational drugs increase his sense of paranoia. However, he soon realizes-the lady tucking the gun into her beach bag is talking to somebody else. Somebody up in the Tilt-A-Whirl.”
“Okay.” This is getting creepy.
“Now, let's pretend you're a heroin addict. A junkie. You've just been rudely awoken. You've seen a woman with a gun, whispering to someone you can't see. What do you do?”
“Freak out?”
“Good answer. You see the gun lady run away. Maybe you get up and run through the mud over there where that broken sprinkler head soaked the ground. You run out from behind the Sunnyside Clyde sign and see a bloody body slumped in one of the Turtles. You freak out even more, pace around and leave your bootprints all over the platform. Then you realize, if you stick around? Everybody is going to say you did it, they'll say the murder was a robbery gone bad. So you decide to get the hell out of there before … before? Danny? Before what?”
“Uhm … uh….” I didn't know this was going to be one of those audience-participation game shows.
“Focus, Danny. You're the junkie. You're a tramp who gets busted for sleeping on the beach or in the bushes or under the boardwalk or up in the Tilt-A-Whirl all the time.”
“So you know everybody's schedule?”
“Awesome! So what do you do?”
“Get the hell out of here before the cop on the scooter shows up?”
“Good answer. But-you realize. That cop usually comes here earlier. Adam Kiger typically swings by when the sun's barely up. In fact, you realize, even though you don't have a watch or an alarm clock, you got to sleep in a little later than usual this Saturday morning. You can tell by how high the sun is over the ocean. But you hear noise. In the distance. A tractor.”
“Joey T.?”
“The Sand Rake sweeps this sector of the beach between 0725 and 0730. As I indicated earlier, your friend keeps a very rigid schedule. Squeegee can hear him coming.”
“So the junkie … he crawls out of the hole and high-tails it … wherever.”
Ceepak nods.
“Did Joey see him?”
“No,” Ceepak says. “He was up the beach, facing north, about to double back and rake south. Like mowing a lawn-he does the beach in overlapping lines.”
“I see.”
“So our junkie friend? He gets extremely lucky. He scurries through the hole and runs up the beach. A few minutes later, Joey T. comes along and covers up his tracks for him. The lady's too. But Jerry saw the lady stub out her cigarette….”
“Which Joey swept up?”
“Check.”
“Which ended up in the Sand Rake's hopper?”
“Double check.”
“Which is now in your pants pocket?”
“Checkmate.”
“So-why didn't Squeegee see Ashley?”
“Firstly, he's, as you say, ‘freaking out’ so he's not seeing much of anything except Mr. Hart's bloody body. Secondly, Ashley was hiding behind the turtle. Remember her footprint path? How it went around to the back?”
Ceepak pulls out his little notebook.
“I asked her, ‘Which way did he go?’ She answered, ‘I'm not sure. I went behind the Turtle to hide.’ I believe she was telling the truth. About hearing Squeegee in the bushes, maybe even catching a glimpse of him stumble-bumming around. She was scared and hid until she was sure he was gone. Probably heard the fence rattle again when he crawled under it.”
“You think she lied about everything? To protect her mother?”