Part 6 (1/2)

He sighed. ”But she's not an easy person, Carolyn. And right after we arrived ...”

His hands made those was.h.i.+ng motions again; the guilty look returned to his face. ”She'd stolen an idea of mine. I found out last night. We argued about it.”

”I see. And did anyone hear you?” The sleet had stopped, but the gray sky over the water was still wintery and the air damply penetrating.

”The bartender heard. I guess it must've been Roger Dodd,” Chip replied.

She parked the car and they got out. ”And there was another guy at the bar, too,” Chip added, sounding as if he was only now re calling this. He zipped his thin cotton jacket, which was in no way adequate for the day's nasty weather. ”Just some local, I think. I remember he had kind of a limp. But he had his own troubles, it looked like.”

He paused. Then: ”I thought about it,” he blurted. ”About hurting her. Just for a minute, she'd made me so angry, it felt like being rid of her would make things better.”

He gazed unhappily at the asphalt parking lot adjacent to the fish pier. ”But I'd never really have done anything to her.”

Just then Bob Arnold drove by in the squad car, flipping one hand up in a curt wave as he pa.s.sed. If he'd learned anything about where Sam was, he'd have stopped to say so.

”He was right, wasn't he?” Chip said, meaning Bob. ”It was stupid of me to let Carolyn come here. And now Sam might be in trouble because of it, too.”

But Jake was still mulling Chip's previous remark, that he'd thought about harming the missing woman. That admission, plus his being the last person known to have seen her ...

”Do yourself a favor, Chip. Don't volunteer more information to anyone but me, okay?”

Because nothing good could come of it. She didn't think Chip had done anything dreadful.

But he could still get his name on a warrant by talking too freely; she sensed in him once more a kind of youthful naivete, a too-honest softness about him that could make him easy pickings for a tough prosecutor.

Although of course she didn't really know what Chip Hahn might've turned into in the years since he and Sam had played catch and tossed footb.a.l.l.s around. Reminding herself that she shouldn't take anything at face value, she pulled the Artful Dodger's front door open, gestured for him to go in ahead of her.

”Meanwhile, let's just see what Roger Dodd has to say about all of this, shall we?” she told Chip. ”You never know, he might remember something important.”

Inside, the air smelled of stale beer and dish detergent. Roger was behind the bar was.h.i.+ng gla.s.ses and placing them on the rinse rack in a.s.sembly-line fas.h.i.+on.

Freshly shaven and dressed as usual in a polo s.h.i.+rt and jeans, he turned the sprayer off and listened while Jake explained who they were looking for and why. After that, she let Chip describe Carolyn and ask about the fellow at the bar, the one with the limp.

Roger's face changed at that part of the conversation, but she wasn't expecting anything to come of it.

So she was amazed when, after giving them the old I-don't-know-anything-about-it routine for a few more minutes, Roger Dodd suddenly broke down.

”I DIDN'T KNOW. WHEN HE WALKED IN LAST NIGHT AFTER two years of me thinking he'd been drowned, I just about fainted,” Roger babbled as they went out. He closed the bar's front door and locked it. ”Anne said she knew Randy wasn't dead, that if he was, there would have been a body. But I told her no, she was crazy to think that after so long.” He sucked in a hitching breath. ”My G.o.d, it was like seeing a ghost... . I knew he was dead. He had to be. Anne and I, we even fought about it. We fought about it on the day she-”

”Shut up, Roger,” Jake told him in disgust. Beside her on the sidewalk, Chip waited silently. He seemed to know he was out of his depth here.

Me too, Jake thought. ”Let's go talk to Bob Arnold,” she told Roger, and he came along obediently enough, still justifying and explaining.

”I didn't know,” he insisted again as he got into the car. ”I loved Anne. I'd never have let anything happen to her.”

”Oh?” she retorted. ”So that's why when your supposedly dead brother showed up here last night, you didn't tell anyone?”

She pulled out of the parking spot. ”Or even before then? That he was still alive, that he'd killed her sister, Cordelia-his own wife-and that he intended to kill Anne, too?”

She felt like punching him, but of course she couldn't. ”You kept your mouth shut on account of how you loved her so much?”

Because that, impossible as it seemed, was the gist of what Roger had admitted: that Chip's crazy theory was right and Randy Dodd was alive-though Roger insisted he hadn't known it until his supposedly deceased sibling appeared hale and hearty in the Artful Dodger the night before. But now Roger was convinced- ”I was about to go see Bob Arnold myself when you two walked in,” he declared defensively.

-and Jake was, too: Randy Dodd was indeed alive, and as recently as twelve hours ago he'd been right here in Eastport.

And that meant anything could have happened. She gunned the engine, causing a couple of blithely jaywalking teenagers to jump back up onto the curb. She didn't quite give them the old middle-finger salute as they glared at her.

But it was close. In the back seat, Roger went on whining. ”Cordelia could've been an accident,” he insisted. ”How was I to know that Randy had-”

”Yeah, sure,” she cut him off sarcastically. ”Her falling down those cellar stairs was just one of those things, huh?”

Sure it was. At the time, everyone had thought so. But now ... She met his eyes in the rearview mirror.

”But Anne dying, and the way that she died-come on, Roger, don't tell me you didn't know then that something was up.”

Stabbed to death in her own kitchen. Imagining it, Jake just barely managed to restrain herself from stomping the gas pedal again.

”But why am I even asking? You knew it all from the start. You had to. Because here's the thing, Roger.”

What the brothers had done was falling together in her head now, like a disgustingly graphic picture puzzle. She might not have believed it at all if he'd been talking about some other motive.

But she did, because it was money-related, and money-plus what it could make people do, the wanting and getting of it-had been her bread and b.u.t.ter once.

In the bad old days, when she'd helped pirates of commerce stash their ill-gotten treasure in offsh.o.r.e accounts.

Chip wasn't comprehending it yet, though. Mostly he just looked frightened.

”Two things,” she corrected herself. ”First, you can't very well inherit any money or anything else when you're dead.”

Roger's lips clamped together stubbornly. ”And that's what it was about, wasn't it?” she continued. ”That's why both sisters died. So you could inherit.”

She thought a moment. ”Probably there was a trust fund.” It was how wealth stayed in wealthy families.

”The proceeds would go to the surviving sister. Once she was gone, you'd be a beneficiary. After the dust settled, you'd share the money with Randy.”

Simple. And it had worked, or nearly. But Roger shook his head in denial.

”I thought Randy had drowned, just like everyone else did. I mean,” he added shakily, ”a long time ago he'd said something to me, to the effect of how if the girls died, we'd be wealthy men.”

They pa.s.sed Wadsworth's hardware store. That insulation, she thought as they went by. Bales and bales of it waiting for her in the attic.

No telling, now, when she might get back to it. In spring maybe. Or never. But who cared? A nice cold layer of ice sounded just right at the moment, like the perfect anesthetic.

”But I told him he was nuts, and to shut up and never talk to me about it anymore,” Roger said. ”I never thought of it again, either. It was an awful thing, repulsive, what he'd suggested, and I told him so.”

He looked out the car window; she followed his gaze briefly. Out on the water the little lobster boat she'd seen earlier by the Chowder House pier puttered determinedly across the waves.