Part 11 (1/2)
Lev looked thoughtful. ”As you say, she's very persuasive. I did think things were a little further along.”
”Like claiming t.i.tle to property she doesn't have?”
”Oh no. She's too sharp for that.” He gave me a quizzical look. ”You still haven't learned to play chess yet, have you?”
”I remember the moves,” I lied.
”Well, Linville Pope has the makings of a natural chess player-always looking eight moves ahead. She sees the ramifications, knows that what happens on this move makes what happens later absolutely inevitable. I'm going to have to watch her closer than I realized. Interesting lady.”
That I would never take chess seriously was one of the things that had rasped him. He loved the game's complexity and admired deviousness in his opponents.
I personally think that bridge and poker call for just as much deviousness. Of course, they also call for more than two players. Was that a fundamental difference?
”So how interesting would you say she is?” I asked, pus.h.i.+ng my plate aside. ”Would she kill?”
”Not for any reason you've laid out here. The woman's bright, beautiful and seems to work hard and smart. Maybe she's a little too cute about the way she acquires property, but what she's offering your friend sounds like a good deal to me. I've looked that factory over from the outside and even if the fis.h.i.+ng continues, it's probably going to need a lot of capital repairs. I bet her whole operation wouldn't bring a half-million, if that, on today's market.”
How casually he tossed off half a million dollars. I was suddenly remembering the tons of pasta we ate because his fellows.h.i.+p money always ran out before the month did.
”Do you still have that book-A Hundred Ways With Pasta?”
”Is that another dig about my current living standards?”
”Not to mention current moral standards if you don't see anything wrong with coercing someone to sell.”
He went into his Daniel Webster mode. ”You don't think your friend might have exaggerated?”
”Barbara Jean can go off half-c.o.c.ked,” I conceded. ”But not without something to light her fuse. She certainly didn't dream up that thing about a boat ramp and storage next door to her ancestral home.”
”But accusing Linville of murdering a fisherman sounds like wishful thinking to me.”
First it was poor Linville and then it was Linville the bright and beautiful. ”Just how long have you known this woman anyhow?” I asked nastily.
”Long enough to know she wouldn't do something that vicious or stupid.”
”Coffee?” chirped our waitress.
I nodded; Lev said, ”Cappuccino?”
”Sorry, sir.”
”Espresso, then.”
”I'm sorry sir, we just have regular and decaf.”
”Decaf then,” he said ungraciously; and when she'd brought it, he grumbled, ”If this town hopes to keep tourists coming back, it's going to have to get serious about its coffee.”
”If the whole world turns into Manhattan, how will you know when you're on vacation?” I asked sweetly.
In a familiar gesture of exasperation, he ran his hand through his hair and wiry tufts stood up angrily. Some things even a fifty-dollar haircut can't change.
He saw my amus.e.m.e.nt, started to bristle and then suddenly smiled. ”Why the h.e.l.l are we talking about Linville Pope and Barbara Jean What's-her-name and fishmeal factories when we should be talking about us? You know, I pictured a thousand times running into you again. I never expected to find you sitting on the bench in a little town on the Intracoastal Waterway.”
I was willing to play and smiled back at him over my coffee cup. ”How did you imagine it?”
”That we were both back in New York on a visit and we b.u.mped into each other over the cheese counter at Zabar's or standing in line for Cats or-”
”Only in Manhattan?” I teased gently.
”Nothing brought me down to Raleigh and I couldn't picture you in Boston. Were you?”
I shook my head.
”What about the Clara Barton Rest Stop on the Jersey Turnpike seven years ago near the end of August?”
His big hands toyed with the gla.s.s candleholder as he tried to make his tone light.
”Were you really there?” I asked, incredulous. ”Why on earth didn't you speak to me?”
He shrugged. ”You were with some other women.”
”Three of my brothers' wives,” I remembered. ”We probably were on our way to see Cats.”
”I had just pulled in and you pa.s.sed right in front of my car. You had on white shorts and a red s.h.i.+rt and your hair was still long.”
”I'm sorry,” I whispered.
”Ah, what the h.e.l.l?” He pushed the candle away and signalled for the bill. ”Let's walk.”
a a a It always amazes me what walkers city people are. We've got the wide open s.p.a.ces and farm work requires a certain amount of walking, but nothing like city life. Probably because we don't categorize feet as a genuine form of transportation. When there are fences to mend down by the creek or if you need to take a jug of water to someone plowing new ground out behind the pasture, you jump in a pickup with four-wheel drive. City people-especially New Yorkers-think nothing of walking two country miles to go pick up a library book.
”Can't we take a bus?” I used to whine, cabs being out of our price range.
”But it's only thirty blocks,” Lev would say heartlessly.
Yet when we weren't rus.h.i.+ng to get somewhere before the doors closed or the lights went down, walking in the city could be wonderful. Beaufort was no city, of course, but we walked through the cool night air and enjoyed the old white clapboard houses, the antique store windows, the deserted sidewalks back up from the water. Tourist season was only beginning so we mostly had those side streets to ourselves even though it wasn't yet ten o'clock.
By tacit consent, our talk was of life in Boston, life in Colleton County, how I'd come to the bench, where are they now all the people we'd known, and who do you suppose lived in this great white house with the widow's walk?
Eventually we wound up near the Ritchie House, the only place still open and still serving drinks. But as he started to open the gla.s.s door to the lounge, Lev said, ”Oh h.e.l.l!” and stepped back quickly.
Through the gla.s.s I saw the Docksiders seated at one of the lounge tables with a couple of attorneys I recognized from court. Mrs. Llewellyn's hair was a swirl of dandelion gold as she threw back her head and laughed at something one of the men had said. There was no sign of Claire Montgomery.
”You're not in the mood for more c.o.c.ktail chatter, are you?” Lev asked.
”Not really.” And certainly not with people I'd effectively ruled against in court.
We walked back along the boardwalk where all the boats were moored. A northeast breeze whipped my hair, and low music from someone's radio mingled with the sound of lapping water. A few of the decks had people sitting outside enjoying the quiet night, but most had gone below, with only a dim glow showing behind curtained windows.
Beneath one of the security lights, I paused and checked my watch. Nearly eleven.