Part 6 (2/2)

”Sure. They see me coming, they smile and say, 'Hi, Bill,' 'Sure thing, Bill,' 'Get right on it, Bill.' Then they never do anything.” He sipped from his mug, put it back on the bar. ”Which you just proved.”

I tried to go back to watching the game, but he stayed where he was, his head hanging slightly, holding on to the mug handle like a tired swimmer. I finished my drink, pushed my plate forward, signaled to John that I was ready to go.

”I don't know what's been Goin' on in your life, Mr. Becket,” he said suddenly. ”But I'm willing to bet something has.”

”Yeah, the Bruins are getting the c.r.a.p kicked out of them, the Celtics lost last night, and I'm glad baseball is under way so the Red Sox can prove that winning last year's champions.h.i.+p was a total fluke.”

”Guy like you,” he said, ”young, good-looking, talented, you clearly could be doing something more than sitting in the bas.e.m.e.nt of some backwater prosecutor's office.”

I thanked him for his observation and he nodded as though my thanks were genuine.

John sidled over. ”You done with that meal, Counselor? You want a doggy bag or anything?” I shook my head and made a little check mark in the air. He cut his eyes to Mr. Telford, indicating he knew exactly why I wasn't eating, why I couldn't enjoy my drink and the game in solitude. Guy comes in, orders a coffee, ruins everything for everyone. All that was expressed in one side glance.

Mr. Telford waited until John went back to the kitchen with my plate before he spoke again. ”You know, it's funny. My Heidi wanted to do so much with her life and didn't get the chance, and here you are, you got the opportunity to do wonderful things, and what do you do instead? Sit around watching other guys play games on television.”

I grimaced. Kept my mouth shut. The guy had lost his daughter.

”Do that much longer,” he said, ”you won't have any other options. Maybe you could take up fis.h.i.+ng. Stand out on the jetty every night with all those guys, got nothing else to do.”

”Look, Mr. Telford, I'm sorry for your loss. I really am. But that doesn't give you the right to track me down, try to make me do what you want by insulting me.”

”Why do you suppose none of the tips I been giving Mitch are in the police file? Why do you suppose they never followed up on any of 'em?”

”Maybe it's because the stuff you're giving them isn't really helpful.”

”The stuff I'm giving them is about the Gregorys.”

That was the moment when I could have left. Should have left. John had emerged from the kitchen and was at the cash register at the end of the bar, totaling me up. I could have gotten off my chair and walked down to where he was, given him my money, gotten out of the restaurant without another word pa.s.sing between Mr. Telford and me. But that is not what I did. Instead, I looked around.

There was an overweight couple a few seats down the bar in the opposite direction from the cash register. Behind us, there was a table occupied by a family and the parents were making a fair amount of noise telling their two kids to sit, be still, stop kicking, eat their french fries.

I looked back at Mr. Telford. His head may have been hanging low, but his eyes were piercing right through me, almost daring me to leave. Go ahead, George, get up and go. Go join Mitch White and Cello DiMasi in whatever circle of h.e.l.l is reserved for those who choose not to do the right thing, who cover up for people who really don't give a d.a.m.n about them.

John appeared in front of me, a slip of paper in his hand. I ordered another Manhattan. John got a funny look on his face, but he took the paper back and went to do what I asked.

”All right, Mr. Telford, tell me what it is you think you've discovered.”

”Let me start by asking you something,” he said.

He made me look at him. The blue-gray eyes, I saw now, had dark rings around the irises.

”You're a lifeguard,” he said, ”working Dowses Beach here in Osterville, and you want to grab something on your way home to Hyannis, a snack or whatever. Where you likely to stop?”

How would I know? I wasn't a lifeguard. Except there was really only one way to go from Dowses to Hyannis. Leave the beach parking lot, take East Bay Road to Main. Turn east.

He pointed in that direction. ”It's just down the street.” We were on Main. ”Next corner, really.”

I made him tell me.

”The Bon Faire Market.”

I knew it, of course. An upscale grocery that had once been a house. Either that or it was so old that it had been built in a day when markets were made to look like houses. If you wanted French cheeses, sculpted cuts of meat, jams that cost nine bucks a jar, fruits and vegetables that looked like works of art, Bon Faire was the place to go.

”Owned by the Ross family,” Mr. Telford said. ”Nice people, but they know their clientele. You can't blame 'em. They're not going to push the most famous family on the Cape out their doors by talking about them.”

My drink came, and with it my revised check. It felt like a secret message: Get out of here, George. Drink up and go before the crazy old man ties you to his car and drags you b.u.mp, b.u.mp, b.u.mp through all the torturous streets and potholed lanes of our precious little seaside community.

”They got fresh-baked cookies, those flavored waters, little energy bars, you name it. So the police check and, sure enough, one of the Ross family girls-Rachel, her name is-had a memory of Heidi going in there on her last day. Thing is, she can't remember anything else.” Bill Telford raised his mug to his lips and took a sip. He made a face, which I a.s.sumed was because the coffee was not to his liking. But then he said, ”You probably want to know why that's important, Heidi being in there. Well, it's one of those things that only her mother and me would know about, and it took us a long time to put it together.”

”You think she met one of the Gregorys in the store.”

”Well, by G.o.d, it didn't take you long.”

He seemed more put out than appreciative.

”Look,” he said, ”the Gregorys come down here in the summer, come down from their fancy schools, and they get any girl they want. My daughter and all her friends knew that. Still, it was kind of a thing for them. Good that one of the Gregory boys. .h.i.t on you-bad if you went along with it. Because, you know, the locals knew these kids weren't interested in them in the long run. So we just had a little restriction in our house, same as a lot of other families around here. You can go out, you can date, you don't allow yourself to get picked up by a Gregory.” He wanted me to tell him I understood.

What I was tempted to say was that I knew full well what the Gregorys did with pretty girls. What I actually said was, ”Because you felt they were only interested in one thing and you didn't want your daughter to be known as one of the girls who gave them that thing.”

”It's true,” he said indignantly, as if I was arguing with him.

But I wasn't arguing. I was thinking of Kendrick Powell lying on her back, her leg on top of the couch back, while Peter leered over her, his c.o.c.k in his hand. Except I hadn't seen his c.o.c.k, had I? I had seen the red candle, I had seen his fingers, I had seen Jamie's finger disappearing inside her. I s.h.i.+vered and drank quickly to try to hide it.

”This is how we put it together, my wife and me.” Mr. Telford wiped his mouth as if smoothing the path for what he was about to say. ”That dress Heidi was wearing, it was an Ann Taylor dress. Paid more for it than she ever did for any of her other clothes. It was probably a style she picked up at school, quality without looking too s.e.xy, you know what I mean?”

I didn't know if I did or not. I had not looked at the dress that closely, not thought about it that deeply, didn't know too much about dresses in the first place. My wife, when we were married, kept most of her dresses at her apartment in Boston.

”Thing is,” Mr. Telford went on, ”what was she doing wearing that dress? Like I told you, it wasn't what she was wearing when she left the house. Second thing, okay, we found some pictures of her when she had worn it before. It had a red belt. Or at least she wore it with a red belt. And red sandals. Accessories, my wife calls them. Both the sandals and the belt are missing. They weren't in the house and the cops never found them. So it makes sense they were in that bag she was carrying when we last saw her. All of it: the dress folded up, the red belt, the red sandals. And she obviously changed someplace outside the house. Question is, why would she?”

It was his turn to look around, look at the fat couple, at the rambunctious kids behind us, at a new group of post-middle-aged, none-too-fit folks who had just come in and taken a table in front of the fireplace. Then he leaned in closer. ”This is the part I'm not real comfortable talking about, Mr. Becket. But my daughter was what you call 'well endowed.' You know what I'm saying?”

It was important to him that I understand there was nothing salacious about what he was telling me. It was just a fact to be recognized. Recognized and reckoned with.

I nodded.

”When they found her, she didn't seem to have been s.e.xually molested, but she wasn't wearing a bra. Okay, we look at the pictures, the pictures of when she was wearing the dress before, and she was definitely wearing a bra then. The other thing is, the cloth of the dress, it's good, st.u.r.dy cloth. It's not like you're going to be able to see all the way through it.”

”Just enough to see that she's well endowed and not wearing a bra.”

He sat back, embarra.s.sed. But this, apparently, was his point.

”Maybe whoever killed her took off the bra.”

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