At ninety-one, Pat Morrissey was the oldest resident of Cape Advantage by four or five years but twice a day, he shuffled his walker down to the cul de sac at my end of the street, around the circular park with the oak tree in the middle, and home again.
He’d been a welder in the Portland Shipyard during World War II and lived in a squat green house at the other end of Waterford Street for seventy-some years. He’d lost his wife Doris long enough ago that he didn’t talk about her any more. Our neighborhood perpetrated a loose conspiracy, keeping an eye on him as much as his pride, and ours, allowed.
From the window of my office that morning, I saw a man walking alongside him, an aide and not one of Pat’s mostly-absent children. He was middle-aged, with long thin gray hair tied back and a body like a bag of potatoes mounted on stiff stick legs. He wore dark blue scrubs.
I bustled downstairs—I wasn’t getting any writing done, anyway—and walked out to the street.
“Pat. Good morning.”
Shoulders curved in by the weight of his age, he propped himself on the walker with his left hand and held out his right. His eyes were pale, bleached blue, and rheumy.
“Daniel. It’s a beautiful morning to be upright, is it not?”
The bones of his hand were fragile as a sparrow’s. I was careful not to squeeze too hard.
“It is indeed, Pat. How are you keeping?”
“This isn’t for the faint of heart, my friend. You know that.”
I turned and offered my hand to the aide, who stared and nodded, his face expressive as a drystone wall.
“You have the MRI appointment at ten, Mr. Morrissey,” he said. “We can’t be late again.”
Pat made a face, the wrinkles moving like veins. He squared himself on the walker and lifted its tennis-ball feet.
“Needs must, Daniel. Maybe you and your lovely bride will come up for a cocktail one night.”
The offer surprised me—I didn’t know he’d met Nicole. And it pleased me. It had been a long time since we lived in a neighborhood where people socialized.
The aide frowned, as if Pat had offered me money. His money.
“One night,” I said. “Certainly.”
***
That very night, early morning actually, my phone buzzed me awake. The green digital numbers on the bedside clock read two-thirteen. My first thought was Nicole, who was on the West Coast for a conference. She’d had a minor heart problem the year before and been fitted for a pacemaker.
“Hello?”
“Daniel.”
The voice was low and gravelly, but unmistakable.
“Pat. What’s wrong?”
“Can you help me, my friend?” He sounded weak and drained, bereft.
“Of course. Do you need a doctor? An ambulance?”
“No, no. It’s too late for that. Just come. Please.”
The request held an element of command.
My heart thudding, I jogged up the road, using the flashlight on my phone to see. There were no streetlights at our end and no lights on in Pat’s house, inside or out. The front door was open a foot.
“Pat?”
I swept the beam into the house. I’d never been inside, but it was a standard configuration for the neighborhood, four square rooms on the ground floor, a daylight basement.
“Kitchen.” Pat hacked, as if something were caught in his throat. “Armando turned the power off at the breaker.”
I walked into the house. This wasn’t a medical emergency for Pat. My flashlight bled over the hunched form at his feet, the aide with the dark blue scrubs, three circular black patches in the middle of his back.
“Panel’s in the garage.” He cleared his throat and spit into a handkerchief.
Only then did I see the pistol in his other hand.
“Jesus, Pat.”
He waved the handkerchief, coughed again.
“Get the lights turned on. I’ll tell you everything.”
I flipped the main breaker back on. The lights were up in the kitchen by the time I returned, Pat in his wheelchair.
“We need to call someone, Pat.”
He laughed, a liquid huff.
“Not a chance.” He lifted the gun off his lap. “I know what I’m doing. He cannot be found in here. None of this happened inside the house.”
In the overhead yellow light, Pat’s face was hard and determined, without the old man vagueness.
“Pat. You killed someone.”
“Self-defense.” His smile was feral. “A burglar breaking into the house of an old man in the middle of the night?”
His shoulders straightened up as we talked.
“All the more reason to call the police. No one will blame you.”
Something was wrong. What was he doing out of bed at two in the morning? With a gun in his hand? And what was the aide doing here at this hour? Stealing from him?
“Armando can’t be found in the house,” he repeated. “You have to help me out.”
Statement more than a question. I couldn’t say no, though I should have.
“Drop him out back in the yard.” Pat handed me the pistol. “And leave that with him. Behind the trees.”
Armando was heavy, but out in the garage I humped him up onto a mechanic’s creeper and wheeled it down the driveway, around the cul de sac, and up the Reynolds’ drive to the back of Pat’s property. The wheels squeaked, but no lights came on.
I rolled the body off into the pines over the stone wall, wiped down the gun, and tossed it into the shadows where it landed with a thud. Then I carried the creeper back to Pat’s garage and knocked on the connecting door. It was locked.
“Pat. We need to talk.”
No answer. I tried once more, then turned and walked up the street to my house in the dark.
***
Nicole came home the next morning. She’d been traveling more for work lately, to more and more distant cities. When she looked out the kitchen window and saw Pat circumnavigating the cul de sac, solo, she jumped up. Diamond earrings I didn’t remember buying her sparked in the sun.
“Oh. I have something for him.”
Curious. I didn’t think she’d ever talked to the man.
She jogged out the driveway, carrying a white envelope. Pat straightened up off his walker with a beatific smile, which widened as he accepted the envelope in both hands. From the way he riffled his thumb over the contents, the envelope held money. Why would Nicole be paying him for anything?
He beckoned her closer and kissed her on the mouth, not a friendly peck but a full-on smooch. Nicole did not pull away.
My head spun. I’d abetted a killing for him and she was paying him off. In more than one way, it seemed.
She looked at me with respect when she came back into the house.
“You want to tell me what that was all about?” I said.
“You proved you could be trusted. Didn’t Pat read you in?”
“Read me into what?”
“What he and I have been doing? How do you think I’ve kept the household going this last year? Why do you think I’ve been traveling so much? You haven’t been contributing much to the pot.”
Yes, I was having a lousy stretch. The book I’d spent three years on had published to utter indifference, and sales of my backlist, even the one novel that won awards, were declining.
“You knew from the start how the writer’s life goes. Sometimes. It will get better.”
“Sometimes? Most of the time. I had to do something.”
“What?”
She frowned, then decided she did trust me.
“Nobody looks very hard at an old man in a wheelchair,” she said. “We go to jewelry stores. Museums. Antique shops.”
“’We.’”
“Me and my grandpa, my father, my sugar daddy. Whatever fits the narrative. People make up their own stories. I sell what we take, in other cities.”
“How long has this been going on?” It didn’t explain the kiss.
“You did a good thing last night. Keeping the cops from coming. His house is full of . . . items.”
“He killed someone, Nicole.”
She threw her hands in the air.
“Armando was stealing from him. You can’t think a man like Pat would let that happen?”
Apparently I didn’t know either one of them as well as I thought.
The police showed up later that morning. From my office, where I was struggling to get my next book off the ground, I saw a box truck and two squad cars in front of Pat’s house. They must have found Armando’s body.
I wasn’t getting anything done, so it was almost a relief when a plain sedan pulled into my driveway. A minute later, the doorbell rang.
“Yes?”
The detective, Ima Johnson from her ID, was Black, a rarity in our suburb, but otherwise unimpressive. Her hair dandelioned out in a sloppy Afro and her black windbreaker had unidentifiable stains down the front. The black polyester slacks were wide-legged, like clown pants. Her only bits of color were the dangling gold earrings in the shape of leaping dolphins.
She carried an iPhone in a plastic bag. My gut curled.
“Are you Mr. Carney?”
“I am.” I couldn’t take my eye off the phone.
“May I come in? A few questions?”
Her tone was deferential, which I did not expect. I led her to the living room, my pulse throbbing.
“Something going on up the street? Is Pat all right?”
“You know Mr. Morrissey, then?”
She lay the evidence bag on the coffee table.
“We’re neighbors. Is he OK?”
“He’s fine. He called in to report a body in his backyard.”
I didn’t want to overplay my surprise.
“My god. Someone’s dead?”
She pulled her lips together.
“Shot. Not natural causes.”
“Damn. Are we safe?”
She picked up the bag.
“I’m going up and down the street. Do you recognize this?”
It would be stupid to deny it. Evidence of ownership was embedded in its contents.
“Looks like mine. Where did you find it?”
She stretched the plastic bag tight over the face.
“Would you type in your pass code? Just to verify?”
Felling as if I were digging my own grave, I complied. The home screen glowed.
“I don’t use it much. We have a landline.”
“Huh. Any idea why this would be underneath the victim?”
“None.”
Johnson looked incredulous, which I understood. Most people couldn’t sit still the length of a stop light without checking their messages. She stood up.
“Then you won’t need it back right away?”
I wanted it out of her hands, but I couldn’t say that.
“Like I said, I don’t use it much.”
The next morning, Nicole and I ate breakfast in the kitchen nook that looked out onto the bird feeders. A cardinal pecked listlessly at a suet ball.
“What is it?” I asked.
She’d been cold since Ima Johnson had been here.
“I don’t know how I feel about living with a killer.”
“I didn’t . . Pat was the one who fired the gun.”
She nodded.
“Of course. You blame it on him, they wouldn’t bother an old man defending his home. While you, for example…”
“Nicole. I did not shoot that man. I don’t think they suspect Pat, either.”
“I’m not counting on that, Daniel. But you stick to your story. If it comes to that.”
That afternoon, I came down from the office to find her drinking a cup of tea.
“You going to work? You’re all dressed up.”
She stared at me over the rim of the teacup.
“I’m taking Pat to the museum today. Exhibition of pre-Columbian artifacts.”
Small, valuable, portable. I wondered how long they’d been doing this and why she hadn’t told me about it until now.
“Isn’t that dangerous? So soon after the body in his yard?”
The cup chimed in its saucer.
“You still don’t get it, do you? No one believes a ninety year old could be a thief.”
A car door slammed out in the driveway. Nicole walked out to answer the door, admitting Ima Johnson, a brawny patrol cop at her side.
“I had an interesting conversation with Mr. Morrissey this morning,” Johnson said. “He said he saw you prowling his backyard the other night. I have a warrant for your arrest, for the murder of Armando Bywater.”
Nicole pulled on her coat.
“Don’t say anything until the lawyer gets there, darling.” She kissed me hard. “Good thing we can afford one, isn’t it?”
She started for the garage.
“Nicole,” I said.
“I won’t wait up,” she said over her shoulder.
Johnson closed the cuffs around my wrists, secure behind my back. They were heavier than lead. I guess no one believed a ninety year old man could be a murderer, either.
“She’s a cool one,” the patrol cop said.
“You have no idea. Cold, even.”
[Image Credit : Photo by Dana Ward on Unsplash]
Richard Cass is the author of the Elder Darrow jazz mystery series. The first book in the series won the 2018 Maine Literary Award for Crime Fiction. The fifth, Sweetie Bogan’s Sorrow, won the Nancy Pearl Librarians’ Prize for Genre Fiction. Dick has also published a thriller called The Last Altruist and a book of short stories entitled Gleam of Bone.
He holds a graduate degree in writing from the University of New Hampshire, where he studied with Thomas Williams, Jr. He’s also studied with Ernest Hebert, Ursula K. LeGuin, and Molly Gloss. His short fiction and nonfiction have appeared in Playboy, Gray’s Sporting Journal, ZZYZVA, Tough, Shotgun Honey and Best Short Stories of the American West. He blogs with the Maine Crime Writers at mainecrimewriters.com. He lives in Cape Elizabeth, Maine, USA, with his wife Anne.
