Robert Parker - Rough Weather

I watched it fly out of sight and then went back inside the barn. The horses were all looking at me.

“I’ll make sure somebody feeds you,” I said.

Susan had sat up, leaning her back against the wall.

“Who are you talking to?” she said.

“The horses,” I said. “They’re looking for breakfast.”

“And what did you tell them?”

“I said I’d get them fed.”

Susan looked at me for a moment, fully awake now.

“My God,” she said. “I hope you look worse than I do.”

“I always look worse than you do,” I said.

“You’re a mud ball,” she said.

I looked down at myself. All of myself that I could see was caked with mud and grass. I looked at her. Her hair had dried plastered to her skull. The only makeup she had left was her eye makeup, which made dark streaks and splotches on her face. I grinned at her.

“Don’t you ever change,” I said.

“What were you doing outside?”

“Watching the helicopter take off,” I said.

“They’re gone?”

“I would say so.”

“All of them?”

“I can’t imagine a reason to leave anyone here,” I said.

Except the guy at the bottom of the cliff.

I wondered if he was still there or, more likely, had washed out to sea.

“So presumably, they’ve got the girl,” Susan said.

“Presumably,” I said.

“What are we going to do?”

“Reconnoiter,” I said.

“I need coffee,” Susan said, “and a bath, and a bright mirror, and food.”

“That will depend on when the power comes back on,” I said.

“Omigod,” Susan said. “No coffee? A cold bath?”

“Maybe there’s a generator,” I said.

We went out of the barn.

“Want to walk with me while I scope out the island,” I said. “Make sure.”

“Yes,” she said. “I don’t want to be someplace without you.”

“Here we go,” I said.

We circled the island. It was a small island. It didn’t take long. I carried my gun in my right hand at my side. I was pretty sure all the evildoers had gone. But there was no reason not to be careful. Halfway around the island there was a body. It was one of the Tashtego patrol guys. Susan stopped. I went ahead and knelt down and looked at his storm-soaked body. He’d been shot once, as far as I could see, in the forehead. I nodded to myself and got up and went back to Susan.

“Dead,” I said. “I suspect we’ll find the others the same way.”

“Rugar?” Susan said.

“Sure,” I said. “Keeping busy. While everybody’s getting ready for the wedding, he walked around and popped these guys, one at a time.”

“They’d have had no reason to be suspicious,” Susan said. “So well dressed, so distinguished, just another wedding guest, taking a stroll.”

“Yep.”

“One at a time,” Susan said. “What kind of a man does that?”

“Probably not a people person,” I said.

There was another security guy dead behind the chapel. Same bullet hole in his forehead. The chapel itself was empty except for the two bodies near the altar rail. The doors were standing open, the candlesticks tipped over, the flowers scattered, the gauze draping tangled and wet.

We moved on into the main house. The sun was up by now, but even so I could see that lights were on in the house. And I could hear the sound of the generator. Probably one of those that kicked in automatically when the power went out. The front door was locked, like that would have slowed Rugar down had he wanted to come in. I walked along the front of the house and looked in the floor-to-ceiling windows at the living room. The wedding guests were there, some asleep on the furniture, some asleep on the floor, some staring apprehensively out the window at me. Most of them looked as if they’d spent a lot of time outside in the weather. Sitting quietly in a big wing chair by the fireplace, Heidi saw me and stood. I pointed to the front door, and she nodded and walked toward it and let me in.

“Oh my God,” she said. “I thought you were dead. Do you know where Adelaide is?”

“Helicopter took off,” I said. “I assume she was aboard.”

“Oh, Jesus,” Heidi said.

“They took her for a reason,” I said. “If they wanted to kill her, they could have done it here.”

She nodded.

“Did you have any chance to save her?” she said.

“No,” I said.

“I’m sure you did your best,” she said.

I nodded.

“Anyone call the cops?” I said.

“Yes. Several people had cell phones. As soon as the candles blew out in the chapel, we all ran out and hid everyplace. The people with cell phones called nine-one-one. But of course the police had no way to get here.”

“They’ll be along,” I said.

“Have the criminals all gone?” Heidi said.

“I just scoped the island,” I said, “and found nobody.”

“Thank God for small favors,” she said.

“Or big ones,” I said.

“Are you all right, Dr. Silverman,” Heidi said.

“Yes,” Susan said.

Heidi studied us for a moment. Her face was pinched, and she looked pallid. But she was not giving in to whatever she felt.

“There’s hot water,” Heidi said. “I’m going to the kitchen now to see if we can get some sort of breakfast together. See if I can find any of the staff.”

Susan and I went to our room, and I got the first sight of myself in the mirror. I looked like I was in blackface… full body.

Susan and I went to the kitchenette, where the floor was made of stone, and took off all our clothes.

“We going to salvage any of your stuff?” I said.

“No,” Susan said.

She found a big green plastic bag in the broom closet, and we bundled the clothes up and put them in the bag. I saved my gun and a jackknife that I took from my pants pocket. Susan saved nothing.

There were two bathrooms, at least, in our suite. We each went to one of them and undertook a cleanup. It took me about half an hour. It took Susan much longer.

We were clean and sprightly. We had drunk coffee and eaten sandwiches in the living room, and now we were talking to the cops. The state guys had the duty on the south-coast islands, and there were a lot of them. The first arrivals were a SWAT team in full battle dress who came in by helicopter, much as their opposites had. They went about securing the island. A second chopper brought some EMTs, who tended to people who thought they needed tending to. Later, by boat, almost sedately, came the detectives, led by the state homicide commander, Captain Healy.

When Healy came into the living room and spotted Susan and me, he gestured for us to follow him and we went down the hall to another room, which somebody called the parlor. In my youth the parlor and the living room were one and the same, but my youth was not spent on Tashtego Island.

“Susan,” Healy said when we were alone. “If I looked like you, I wouldn’t waste my time on the likes of him.”

“There are things you don’t know,” Susan said.

“Or want to,” Healy said. Then he turned to me and said, “Okay, tell me what you know.”

I told him. He looked at Susan.

“Anything to add?” he said.

She shook her head. He looked back at me.

“Just to be sure I understand,” Healy said, “Heidi Bradshaw hired you to be some sort of substitute husband for the wedding.”

“What she told me,” I said.

“You believe her?”

“No.”

Healy looked at Susan.

“You believe her,” he said.

“No.”

“Either of you have an idea of what she might really have wanted?”

Susan said, “No.”

I said, “No idea.”

Healy nodded.