Death at Charity's Point by William G. Tapply Read Free Book Online Page B

think you can outtalk us lay people. But it doesn’t make you right, you know. Come on, Counselor. We’re just having a little discussion here. We’re not in front of any judge or jury now, so you don’t have to conquer any adversaries or win points. Not with me. What do you really think?”
    I touched Julie’s hand. “I really think that George jumped into the ocean, that’s what I think. But you are right in one respect. The lawyer in me should doubt it.”
    “The human being in me doubts it,” said Julie. “I can’t get Mrs. Gresham’s face out of my head. So what’re you going to do?”
    “Go up to The Ruggles School. See if I can talk to some people. Try to make some sense of it for Florence. It’s the least I can do.”
    Julie smiled. “Good. That’s good.”
    “In the meantime, tell me about all the morning’s excitement in the bustling offices of Brady L. Coyne, Attorney-at-Law. What happened while I was gone?”
    She waved her hand around. “Nothing interesting. More coffee?”
    There’s a little restaurant along Route 127 south of Gloucester known as Gert’s Place. The sign outside announces, in typical understatement, simply “Good Food.” The tourists always miss it, of course, as they race along the superhighways for the glamorous spots on the Massachusetts North Shore—Gloucester, with its fishing fleets and its Moonies and its statue of the slickered fisherman at the helm, or Rockport with its famous Motif #1 and its boutiques on Bearskin Neck, or history-rich Newburyport at the mouth of the Merrimack.
    The sun-worshippers miss Gert’s, too, preferring to crawl bumper-to-bumper along Route 128 on a steamy Saturday for the dubious pleasure of lying cheek to thigh with similarly minded strangers on the glimmering sands of Crane’s or Wingaersheek or Good Harbor or Singing Beach, in a mindless race to see who can contract the first case of skin cancer.
    The folks who live hard by the ocean go about their business, tolerant in their taciturn Yankee way of the strange people who drive long distances to broil under the sun on their beaches. They’re happy to sell them old pieces of furniture and ice cream cones and gasoline along the way, and if they think it’s damn foolishness, they keep it to themselves.
    Gert knows what to do with bluefish and wine, and she performs saintly miracles with fresh ground pepper and lemon slices and striped bass. The halibut and the sole and the scrod she buys directly off the boats, and she gets the fillets into her ovens under a layer of breadcrumb and butter and bits of shrimp and crab before the fish realizes it’s dead. She serves Gloucester lobsters and Ipswich clams. For those who prefer, Gert keeps in her head a portfolio of recipes inherited from her mother, who must have been a Neapolitan wizard. Gert’s veal scallopine with mushrooms and peppers and a carafe of her musty house red remains my second favorite way of accomplishing sensual ecstasy.
    The crushed-stone parking area alongside the rambling, cedar-shingled building was nearly full when I arrived at Gert’s. It was about noon on Tuesday. I got there at lunch time, needing directions to The Ruggles School and having had no breakfast. I hadn’t exactly planned it that way, at least not consciously, but it worked out just the way I wanted.
    The dining room was crowded—local people, mostly men, some in shirt and tie, their jackets thrown over the backs of their chairs, and others in work clothes. Bankers and insurance salesmen, electricians and plumbers, clerks and a few young secretaries.
    I was led to a small table with a checked tablecloth against a side wall. The place was noisy. The patrons all seemed to know each other, and laughter bubbled up frequently as the diners conversed, the men and women twisting in their chairs to talk with friends at adjacent tables.
    My waitress was a hefty girl in her twenties. She dumped a pile of silverware in front of me, then straightened, pencil