Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine. Vol. 38, No. 13, Mid-December 1993

You’d be amazed how much bric-a-brac kids leave behind when they’ve gone for the season — never mind for good. Claudia and Granny Cabral and I cried ourselves dry while we packed away three lives in neat cardboard boxes and arranged for storage. I babysat those kids every summer from the time they were toddlers — and little hellions they could be, to be honest — but they were only eleven and nine when it happened. Life’s stinking sometimes.

My current problem was, all that happened back in the depths of November, and here we were setting sail into May. In the interim I’d lost Gran, my oak post in the gale, and inherited her Cape house. In April, when I came into a tiny trust fund from a half-remembered godfather, I’d finally chucked poor old Perkin in a footlocker and settled out here on Cape Cod. I’d long since cried all my tears. I hoped Hal had, too.

Hal used the side entrance of his cottage. At least, I didn’t see him again, and the blinds in his kitchen twitched open.

Gran’s hedge looked as though Goliath the Rodent had been gnawing at it. High time I got my cousin Sam to sharpen those clippers; besides, I needed supplies. I straddled my aged ten-speed and popped the clippers in the rear basket.

Padstow, our local village, is a few sand-blasted buildings in search of an identity. Cape Cod stabs into the Atlantic like a jester’s foot, toe pointed north. We’re on the high arch of the foot, but you won’t find us on most maps. Our mail says Wellfleet, which is just around the curve of the harbor and popular, I can tell you. Better known and slicker, they suffer the full impact of tourism; we settle for glorious weather and a little peace. Padstow’s natives are descended from Portuguese fishermen; its summer families, like flocks of geese, migrate with the seasons, Boston to Bermuda to Padstow and back again. I’m a rare hybrid, half native, half goose, and move a little uneasily between the two worlds.

I was propping my bicycle against Dulcie’s Market when a blue Checker sedan slid to a halt beside me and Carly Whitehead leaned out.

“Hey, Tess, was that Hal Benson in that awful car?” she demanded through a cloud of cigarette smoke the color of her well-shaped hair. The curious faces of five Abyssinian cats peered around her shoulders.

I was used to that battery of eyes. You rarely saw Carly sans cats. “He just got in,” I admitted. “But—”

“Don’t worry.” She shoved a cat off her shoulder. “I’m not the Welcome Wagon. Did he speak?”

“To say what?” I asked, exasperated.

“Hello would be sufficient,” she said dryly, waving a cat’s whiskers away from her glowing cigarette, “or he might explain who those two drifters are who’ve camped in his boathouse.”

“What two—”

“Saw them yesterday evening, when I was fishing in my dinghy.” She grinned, pleased to be first with the news. “Looked like beach bums — backpacks and cutoffs. Seemed to be setting up house.”

Hal’s boathouse is around the point, out of sight of my place. It’s weathertight, but surely he could do better for visiting friends. If they were friends. If he knew.

“Okay,” I sighed. “I’ll ask him.”

“Just like to be sure,” Carly nodded. “Where’s your mom these days?”

“Cannes.” I bit off further comment.

“Saw where your dad’s schmoozing an earl’s daughter.” She grinned, inviting me to see the joke. Which I did, when I was in the right mood.

Joe Cabral had been Padstow’s auto mechanic when Mama seduced and married him to spite her snooty Brahmin family. They couldn’t retaliate much because she’d already inherited slices of two states from her grandmother. The Colorado chunk was near Vail, and the Texas bit, you’d better believe, was not just mesquite country. So Joe acquired champagne tastes, and Mama acquired me, then chucked him out for some peccadillo she’d never discuss. She must have paid him a wad for the divorce because Joe promptly took his new polish and his old charm and worked his way along the Social Register. He couldn’t go much higher than Mama, but an earl’s daughter might be a half-step up if you counted snob value. I hadn’t seen Joe in fifteen years.

“He was holding out for a princess, but they’re all under age,” I said deadpan.

Carly hooted, pleased at getting a rise out of me. Her car lurched, ground its gears, and purred away. She always was a rotten driver.

Cousin Sam Cabral, our mechanic now that Joe had bigger fish to fry, pronounced my hedge clippers terminal and sold me an almost new pair a summer visitor had abandoned. To my question, he nodded.

“Sure. Two guys on scooters. Night before last. Didn’t ask directions.” His seamed face showed no curiosity. Sam preferred machines to people.

I worked my way through the breadline at Dulcie’s, then cruised homeward. The Carlisles had arrived, I noted, and Deenie Durham’s Jag was in her drive. Since it was Tuesday, they’d probably be here for the week. Maybe that clambake on Friday wouldn’t be a complete bust after all.