The Ferryman's Beautiful Daughter by Peter Robinson

Author:Peter Robinson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2009-02-05T05:00:00+00:00

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 drugstore 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, with a sly glance at me. “Maybe they even did it with you. You were over there often enough. Did they, Grace? Did they do it with you, too?”

“Oh, shut up!” I said. Then 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. I’d lost my best friend, and the boy I thought was in love with her had been arrested for her murder. Things couldn’t get much worse. It just didn’t make sense. Mary Jane had 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 Donovan 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,” I 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 awhile 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.

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