him Abra Walsh had a history of hooking up with violent types, which would make Landon the perfect match—if he bashed the wife’s head in, which Duncan had come to doubt. Maybe Landon was her current choice, he thought, but current was key as he couldn’t find one crumb to start a trail cozying the two of them up before the murder.
Even the thin report he had didn’t hold with the client’s insistence Landon was guilty, or with the certainty of Duncan’s old friend Wolfe, one of Boston’s finest, that Landon had snapped and bashed his cheating wife’s brains in.
The longer he watched, the less guilty the poor bastard looked.
To draw out information, he’d tried the direct approach, as with the sexy housekeeper, and the more circular style with the clerk at the B&B and a couple others. Just commenting on the big house on the bluff, asking, as any tourist might, about its history, its owners.
He’d gotten an earful there about a fortune built initially on booze, from pirate plunder to distilleries to running whiskey during the bad old days of Prohibition. Legends of stolen jewels hidden for generations, family scandals, the expected ghosts, heroes, villains right up to Eli Landon’s scandal.
His most entertaining source had been the pretty clerk in a gift shop who’d been happy to spend a half hour on a gloomy, preseason afternoon gossiping with a paying customer. Gossips often stood as a PI’s best friend, and Heather Lockaby had been plenty friendly.
She felt terrible for Eli, Duncan recalled. Deemed the dead wife a cold, unfriendly snob who couldn’t even take the time to pay visits to Eli’s elderly grandmother. She’d gone off track with Hester Landon’s fall, but he’d reeled her back easily enough.
According to the loose-tongued Heather, Landon hadn’t lacked for female companionship during his summers and breaks at Whiskey Beach, or during his teens and twenties in any case. He’d liked to party, to suck down beers at the local watering holes and ride around in his convertible.
Nobody, according to Heather, expected him to settle down and get married before he hit thirty. And there’d been plenty of speculation about that, which had died off when no baby came along.
It was obvious there was trouble in paradise when Eli stopped bringing her to Bluff House, then when he stopped coming. Nobody blinked an eye when word circulated about a divorce.
And she, personally, knew before it came out that the cold fish of a wife was having an affair. It just stood to reason. She didn’t blame Eli one bit for being upset and lighting into her. No, she didn’t. And if he killed her, and naturally she didn’t think that for a minute, she was sure it had been an accident.
He didn’t ask how smacking a woman on the back of the head with a poker a few times equaled accident, as he’d already dropped two hundred and fifty bucks on whatnots to keep her talking, and outside of the entertainment value, she’d given him nothing.
Still, he found it interesting that at least some of the locals suspected the favored son of murder. And suspicion opened doors. He’d be knocking on them in the days to come and earn his fee.
For now, he considered moving on, calling it a day. Or at least taking a quick bathroom break.
He shifted his numb ass side to side as his cell phone rang.
“Duncan.” He shifted again at his client’s voice. “As it happens I’m sitting outside his parents’ house on Beacon Hill. He drove into Boston this morning. I’ll have a report for you by—”
He shifted butt cheeks again as the client interrupted with a spate of questions.
“Yeah, that’s right. He’s been in Boston all day, met with his lawyer, got a haircut, bought some flowers.”
The client paid the bills, he reminded himself as he logged the call in his book. “His sister and her family went in about a half hour ago. Looks like full family visit. Given the timing, I’d say he’s here for dinner at least. I don’t think there’s going to be any more activity here so . . . If that’s what you want. I can do that.”
It’s your money, Duncan thought, and resigned himself to a long evening. “I’ll contact you when he comes out.”
When the phone clicked in his ear, Duncan shook his head. Clients paid the bills, he thought again, and ate another carrot stick.
Maybe he’d been gone only a few weeks, but it felt like a