Artist's Proof by Gordon Cotler

Author:Gordon Cotler
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781466884359
Publisher: St. Martin's Press

FIFTEEN

WE DROVE OVER to the Gulliver in Chuck’s chief’s car. We seemed to be easing back to our old relationship. En route I said, “Will this make a problem for you?”

“What?”

“My coming along. Docherty’s favorite suspect?”

“Docherty’s on his way to Brooklyn,” he said, as though that explained a lot. “And you’re the only one who can make a positive ID of this possible witness.” Then, as an afterthought. “Anyway, until there’s an arrest, everyone east of Patchogue is a suspect. People are edgy. The hardware store is selling door and window locks like there’s a fire sale. It’s a sad time for this village.”

“How well did you know Cassie?”

“Mostly to say hello. She was a genuine Ten, wasn’t she? A real winner. If I wasn’t married I’d have asked her out. She seemed to light up around older guys.”

By Cassie’s standards Chuck was an older guy. I said, “She had an older boyfriend, didn’t she?”

“That mechanic at the Huggins station. Malatesta. Yeah, he’s twenty-five. If he was her boyfriend.”

“What do you mean?”

“We talked to him. Were they going together? We mostly have his word for it. After she died.”

“I can’t think why he’d make that up.”

“And I don’t know anybody who ever saw them together.”

“They’d have kept a low profile,” I said. “They didn’t have Mrs. Brennan’s blessing. Paulie wasn’t even at the wake.”

I had a question that was likely to draw a None of your business, so I turned it into a statement that didn’t have to be answered. I said, “I’m sure the ME checked for a possible rape.”

Chuck took a moment to decide whether to share the information with me. He came down on my side.

“She’d had intercourse recently. There was no indication of rape.” His voice was tight with embarrassment. “They found traces of a lubricant used on condoms.”

The news shouldn’t have surprised me, so why did my pulse quicken? Sometime after Cassie proclaimed her virginity to me the previous fall she had obviously had a change of heart. And body. She had left her constricting home, and this world, somewhat more woman than girl. I devoutly hoped her exploration of the senses, no matter how brief a time she had for it, had been fulfilling, and that it had been accompanied by love in all its glory. I was rooting for that.

* * *

THEY TOLD US at the Gulliver that Harry Gregg wasn’t due at work until 2 P.M., so we doubled back south toward where he lived. Chuck remembered the house from a single visit he had made to it as a teenager. “I think Harry was born in that house. North of the highway, but not that far north,” he said.

North of the highway meant a less valuable property; not that far north meant that Gregg lived a brisk walk from the beach. Chuck said the house was old even when he saw it years ago, and declining. And, he warned me, so was the present-day Harry Gregg.

According to Chuck’s thumbnail sketch, Gregg

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