The Mammoth Book of Best British Mysteries Page 26

  It was just little things at first, like a string of beads she bought at a junk shop in Logan. It was nothing much, really, just cheap colored glass, but it was something she would have turned her nose up at a short while ago. Now, it replaced the lovely gold chain and heart pendant that her parents had given her for her fifteenth birthday. Next came the red cheesecloth top with the silver sequins and fancy Indian embroidery, and the first Mad Hatters LP, the one with “her song” on it.

  We went often to the island to see Jared and the others, and I soon began to sense something, some deeper connection, between Mary Jane and Jared and, quite frankly, it worried me. They started wandering off together for hours, and sometimes she told me to go back home without her, that she’d catch a later ferry. It wasn’t that Mary Jane was naive or anything, or that I didn’t trust Jared. I also knew that Mary Jane’s father was liberal, and she said he trusted her, but I still worried. The townsfolk were already getting a bit suspicious because of the odd way she was dressing. Even Riley McCorkindale gave her strange looks in chapel. It didn’t take a genius to put two and two together. At the very least, if she wasn’t careful, she could end up grounded for the rest of the summer.

  Things came to a head after chapel one Sunday in August. The Preacher had delivered one of his most blistering sermons about what happens to those who turn away from the path of righteousness and embrace evil, complete with a graphic description of the torments of hell. Afterwards, people were standing talking, as they do, all a little nervous, and Mary Jane actually said to the Preacher that she didn’t believe there was a hell, that if God was good, he wouldn’t do such horrible things to people. The Preacher turned scarlet, and it was only the fact that Mary Jane ran off and jumped on the ferry that stopped him taking her by the ear and dragging her back inside the chapel for special instruction whether she liked it or not. But he wouldn’t forget. One way or another, there’d be hell to pay.

  Or there would have been, except that was the evening they found Mary Jane’s body on the western beach of Pine Island.

  The fisherman who found her said he first thought it was a bundle of clothes on the sand. Then, when he went to investigate, he realized that it was a young girl and sailed back to Jasmine Cove as fast as he could. Soon, the police launch was heading out there, the parking lot was full of police cars and the sheriff had commandeered the ferry. Mr Kiernan was beside himself, blaming himself for not keeping a closer eye on her. But it wasn’t his fault. He wasn’t as mean-spirited as the rest, and how could he know what would happen, anyway? By the time it started to get dark, word was spreading around town that a girl’s body had been found, that it was the body of Mary Jane Kiernan and that she had been strangled.

  I can’t really describe the shock I felt when I first heard the news. It was if my whole being went numb. I didn’t believe it at first, of course, but in a way I did. So many people said it had happened that in the end I just had to believe it. Mary Jane was gone.

  The next few days passed as in a dream. I remember only that the newspapers were full of stories about some huge gathering out east for folks like the Newcomers, at a place called Woodstock, where it rained cats and dogs and everyone played in the mud. The police came around and questioned everybody, and I was among the first, being Mary Jane’s closest friend. The young detective, Lonnegan was his name, seemed nice enough, and Mother offered him a glass of iced tea, which he accepted. His forehead and upper lip were covered by a thin film of sweat.

  “Now then, little lady,” he began.

  “My name’s Grace,” I corrected him. “I am not a little lady.”

  I’ll give him his due, he took it in his stride. “Very well, Grace,” he said. “Mary Jane was your best friend. Is that right?”

  “Yes,” I answered.

  “Were you with her when she went to Pine Island last Wednesday?”

  “No,” I said.

  “Didn’t you usually go there together?”

  “Sometimes. Not always.”

  “Why did she go there? There’s not exactly a lot to see or do.”

  I shrugged. “It’s peaceful. There’s a nice beach . . .” I couldn’t help myself, but as soon as I thought of the beach – it had been our beach – the tears started to flow. Lonnegan paused while I reached for a tissue, dried my eyes and composed myself. “I’m sorry,” I went on. “It’s just a very beautiful place. And there are all kinds of interesting sea birds.”

  “Yes, but that’s not why Mary Jane went there, is it, for the sea birds?”

  “Isn’t it? I don’t know.”

  “Come on, Grace,” said Lonnegan, “we already know she was seeing a young man called David Garwell.”

  David Garwell. So that was Jared’s real name. “Why ask me, then?”

  “Do you know if she had arranged to meet him that day? Last Wednesday?”

  “I’m sure I don’t know,” I said. “Mary Jane didn’t confide in me about everything.” Maybe he did know that Mary Jane was “seeing” Jared, but I wasn’t going to tell him that she had told me just two days before she died that she was in love with him, and that as soon as she turned sixteen she planned to go and live with him and the others on Pine Island. That wouldn’t have gone down well at all with Detective Lonnegan. Besides, it was our secret.

  Lonnegan looked uncomfortable and shuffled in his seat, then he dropped his bombshell. “Maybe she didn’t tell you that she was having a baby, Grace, huh? And we think it was his. Did Mary Jane tell you she was having David Garwell’s baby?”

  In the end, it didn’t matter what I thought or said. While the bedraggled crowds were heading home from Woodstock in the east, the police arrested Jared – David Garwell – for the murder of Mary Jane Kiernan. They weren’t giving out a whole lot of details, but rumor had it that they had found Mary Jane’s gold pendant in a drawer in his room.

  “He did it, Grace, you know he did,” said Cathy Baker outside the drug store a few days later. “People like that . . . they’re . . . ugh!” She pulled a face and made a gesture with her hands as if to sweep spiders off her chest. “They’re not like us.”

  “But why would he hurt her?” I asked. “He loved her.”

  “Love?” echoed Cathy. “They don’t know the meaning of the word.”

  “They call it free love, you know,” Lynne Everett chirped in. “And that means they do it with anyone.”

  “And everyone,” added Cathy.

  I gave up. What was the point? They weren’t going to listen. I walked down Main Street with my head hung low and the sun beating on the back of my neck. It just didn’t make sense. Mary Jane stopped wearing the pendant when she bought the cheap colored beads. Jared couldn’t have stolen it from her, even if he was capable of such a thing, unless he had broken into her house on the mainland, which seemed very unlikely to me. And she hadn’t been wearing it on the day she died, I was certain of that. It made far more sense to assume that she had given it to him as a token of her love.

  The problem was that I hadn’t seen Jared or any of the others since the arrest, so I hadn’t been able to ask them what happened. The police had searched the cabins, of course, and they said they found drugs, so they hauled everybody into the county jail and put the children in care.

  I was so lost in thought that I didn’t even notice Detective Lonnegan walking beside me until he spoke my name and asked me if I wanted to go into Slater’s with him for a coffee.

  “I’m not allowed to drink coffee,” told him, “but I’ll have a soda, if that’s all right.”

  He said that was fine and we went inside and took a table. He waited a while before speaking, then he said, “Look, Grace, I know that this is all a terrible shock to you, that Mary Jane was your best friend. I respect that, but if you know anything else that will help us in court against the man who killed her, I’d really be grateful if you’d tell me.”

  “Why do you need me?” I asked. “I thought you knew everything. You’ve already put him in jail.”

/>   “I know,” Lonnegan agreed. “And we’ve probably got enough to convict him, but every little helps. Did she say anything? Did you see anything?”

  I told him how Jared couldn’t possibly have stolen the locket unless he went to the mainland.

  Lonnegan smiled. “I don’t know how you know about that,” he said. “I suppose I shouldn’t underestimate small town gossip. We know she wasn’t wearing the locket on the day she died, but we don’t know when he stole it.”

  “He didn’t steal it! Jared’s not a thief.”

  Lonnegan coughed. “I beg to differ, Grace,” he said. “David Garwell has a record that includes larceny and possession of dangerous drugs. He should have been in jail to start with, but he skipped bail.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “That’s up to you. I could show you the evidence if you want to come to headquarters.”

  “No, thank you.”

  “It’s your choice.”

  “But why would he hurt Mary Jane? He told her he loved her.”

  Lonnegan’s ears pricked up. “He did?” He toyed with his coffee cup on the saucer. It still had an old lipstick stain around the rim. “We think they had an argument,” he said. “Maybe Mary Jane discovered the theft of the pendant. Or perhaps she told Garwell that she was pregnant, and he wanted nothing further to do with her. Either way, she ran off down to that cozy little beach the two of you liked so much. He followed her, maybe worried that she’d tell her parents, or the police. They fought, and he strangled her.”

  “But then he’d know for certain that the police would suspect him!”

  “People ain’t always thinking straight when they’re mad, Grace.”

  I shook my head. I know what he said made sense, but it didn’t make sense, if you see what I mean. I didn’t know what else to say.

  “You’re going to have to accept it sooner or later, Grace,” Lonnegan said. “This Jared, as you call him, murdered your friend, and you’re probably the only one who can help us make sure he pays for his crime.”

  “But I can’t help you. Don’t you see? I still don’t believe Jared did it.”

  Lonnegan sighed. “They had an argument. She walked off. He admits that much. He won’t tell us what it was about, but like I said, I think she confronted him over the gold pendant or the pregnancy. He followed her.”

  I squirmed in my seat, took a long sip of soda and asked, “Who else was on the island that day? Have you checked?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You must have asked Mr Kiernan, Mary Jane’s father, who he took over and brought back that day. Was there anyone else who shouldn’t have been there? Have you questioned them all, asked them for alibis?”

  “No, but . . .”

  “Don’t you think you ought to? Why can’t it be one of those people?”

  “Like who?”

  “The Preacher!” I blurted it out.

  Lonnegan shook his head, looking puzzled. “The Preacher? Why?”

  “Was he there? Was he on the ferry?”

  “You know I can’t tell you that.”

  “Well, you just ask him,” I said, standing up, “because Mary Jane told me she saw him touching Betsy Goodall somewhere he shouldn’t have been touching her.”

  The Preacher was waiting for me after chapel the following Sunday. “Grace, a word in your ear,” he said, leading me by the arm. He was smiling and looked friendly enough, in that well-scrubbed way of his, to fool anyone watching, including my parents, but his grip hurt. He took me back inside the dark chapel and sat me down in a corner, crowding me, his face close to mine. I couldn’t smell bourbon on his breath – not that I would have known what it smelled like – but I could smell peppermint. “I had a visit from the police the other day,” he said, “a most unwelcome visit, and I’ve been trying to figure out ever since who’s been telling tales out of school. I think it was you, Grace. You were her friend. Thick as thieves, the two of you, always unnaturally close.”

  “There was nothing unnatural about it,” I said, my heart beating fast. “And yes, we were friends. So what?”

  His upper lip curled. “Don’t you give me any of your smart-talk, young lady. You caused me a lot of trouble, you did, a lot of grief.”

  “You’ve got nothing to worry about if you’re pure in heart and true in the eyes of the Lord. Isn’t that what you’re always telling us?”

  “Don’t take the Lord’s word in vain. I swear, one day . . .” He shook his head. “Grace, I do believe you’re headed for a life of sin, and you know what the wages of sin are, don’t you?”

  “Did you go to Pine Island that day, Preacher? The day Mary Jane died. Were you on the ferry? You were, weren’t you?”

  The Preacher looked away. “As a matter of fact, I had some important business there,” he said. “Real estate business.” We all knew about the Preacher and his real estate. He seemed to think the best way of carrying out God’s plan on earth was to take ownership of as much of it as he could afford.

  “Why haven’t they arrested you?” I asked.

  “Because I haven’t done anything wrong. The police believe me. So should you. There’s no evidence against me. I didn’t strangle that girl.”

  “Mary Jane told me about Betsy Goodall, about what she saw.”

  “And just what did she see? I’ll tell you what she saw. Nothing. Ask Betsy Goodall. The police did. Your friend Mary Jane was a wayward child,” the Preacher said, his voice a sort of drone. “She had a vile imagination. Evil. She made up stories. The police know that now. They talked to me and they talked to Betsy. I just want to warn you, Grace. Don’t you go around making any more grief for me, or you’ll have more trouble than you can imagine. Do you understand me?”

  “Betsy was too scared to say anything, wasn’t she? She was frightened of what you might do to her. What did you do to Mary Jane?”

  There. It was out before I realized it. That’s the problem with me sometimes: I speak before thinking. I felt his fingers squeeze into my arm and I cried out. “Do you understand me?” he asked again, his voice a reptilian whisper.

  “Yes!” I said. “You’re hurting me! Yes, I understand. Leave me alone.” And I wrenched my arm free and ran out of the chapel over to the ferry dock. I wanted to be by myself, and I wanted to walk where Mary Jane and I had walked. There was really only one place I could go, and I was lucky, I had only ten minutes to wait.

  The day had turned hazy, warm and sticky. There’d be a storm after dark, everyone said. Mr Kiernan seemed worried about me and told me if I wasn’t on the next ferry home he’d send someone looking for me. I said that was sweet but I would be all right. Then he said he’d keep an eye on the weather to make sure I didn’t get stuck out there when the storm came.

  I walked past the houses and through the woods to the southern tip of the island, where the Newcomers used to live. They had been taken away so fast they hadn’t even had time to grab what few belongings they had. Nobody seemed to know what would happen to their things now, whether anyone would come for them. I stood behind the cover of the trees looking into the clearing, the way Mary Jane and I had done that first time, when we saw Jared come out of the shower. And there it was again, faint, drifting, as if it belonged to the air it traveled on: Mary Jane’s song. “And Mary Jane is dreaming/Of oceans dark and gleaming.”

  But who was playing it?

  Heart in my mouth, I ducked low and waited. I wanted to know, but I didn’t want to go in there, the way people went into basements and rooms in movies when they knew evil lurked there. So I hid.

  As it turned out, I didn’t have long to wait. As soon as the song ended, a furtive head peeped out of the doorway and, gauging that all was clear, the young man stepped out into the open. My jaw dropped. It was Riley McCorkindale.

  Some instinct still held me back from announcing my presence, so I stayed where I was. Riley stood, ears pricked, glancing around furtively, then he headed away from the cabins – not back towards his
parents’ house, but west, towards the cliffs. Now I was really puzzled.

  When I calculated that Riley had got a safe distance ahead of me, I followed through the trees. I couldn’t see him, but there weren’t many paths on the island, and not many places to go if you were heading in that direction. Once in a while I would stop and listen, and I could hear him way ahead, snapping a twig, rustling a bush as he walked. I hoped he didn’t stop and listen the same way and hear me following him.

  As I walked, I wondered what on earth Riley had been doing at the Newcomers’ cabin. Playing the record with the Mary Jane song on it, obviously. But why? I knew he had been sweet on her, of course, but he had always been too shy to say hello. Had he made friends with the Newcomers? After all, they were practically neighbours. But Riley went to chapel, and he seemed the type to take notice of the Preacher. His father was a property developer in Logan, so they were a wealthy and respected family in the community, too, which made it even more unlikely that Riley would have anything to do with Jared and the others.

  When I reached the cliffs, there was no one in sight. I glanced over the edge, down towards the beach but saw no one there, either. I wasn’t sure whether Riley knew about the hidden path Mary Jane and I used to take. He lived on the island, so perhaps he did. I stood still for a moment and felt the wind whipping my hair in my eyes and tugging at my clothes, bringing the dark clouds from far out at seas, heard the raucous cries of gulls over a shoal of fish just off the coast, smelled the salt air. Then, just as I started to move towards the path, I heard a voice behind me.

  “You.”

  I turned. Riley stepped out from the edge of the woods.

  “Riley,” I said, smiling, trying to sound relaxed, and holding my hair from my eyes. “You startled me. What are you doing here?”