Invasion of Privacy - Jeremiah Healy by Jeremiah Healy Read Free Book Online

ahead of me."
    "This town, all the afternoons are 1ong."
    Given the inflection, I thought Edie might be
floating an invitation. Liking the way she did it, I still didn't
want to mislead her. "I'm checking out how a management company
runs one of the condos around here."
    "Checking out?"
    "I'm a private investigator."
    "No kidding?"
    "Here's my identification?
    Edie unfolded the little leather holder, her lip
under the front teeth again, reading the laminated card before
handing it back to me. "Which complex you interested in?"
    "Plymouth Willows."
    The remains of Edie's smile froze. "Don't know
much about how that's going."
    "You don't."
    "No. I live the other way."
    One of the retirees motioned for another round, and
Edie moved stiffly to fill his glass before taking my food order to
the kitchen. It was a while before she came back out, busying herself
rearranging shells on the bed of ice that had looked fine as they
were.
    I said, "How about just directions, then?"
    Edie kept her eyes on the ice. "Directions?"
    "To Plymouth Willows."
    She spoke mechanically, toward the shells. "We're
on Main Street here. Take Main south to the little bridge over the
river. About a mile after the bridge, just past the . . ."
    Something was giving her trouble. "Just past the
bluff on the left, you'll hang a right and go down maybe another mile
and a half to the Willows sign on your left."
    "Sounds easy enough."
    "You miss the turn and keep going straight,
you'll get to the gore."
    "What's the gore?"
    "It's a blip on the survey maps that . . .
somebody did for all the development down here in the eighties. The
gore's like a bog with swampy water around it."
    Another customer called out her name. To me, Edie
said, "Sorry, but I'm going to be kind of busy here." She
didn't sound sorry.
    I nursed the ale, and Edie circulated, studiously
avoiding my end of the bar until a lighted bell chimed above the
liquor bottles, causing her to go back into the kitchen and reappear
with a hamburger plate.
    As she set it in front of me, I lowered my voice.
"Did I push the wrong button or something?"
    "No," a little too quickly. "I'm just
busy, like I said."
    "You wouldn't happen to know anybody who lives
at Plymouth Willows, would you?"
    Edie looked up, guarded. "You mean, like for you
to talk to?"
    "Yes."
    "Maybe Andy Dees. He runs the photocopy up the
street."
    Perfect. "Thanks, I'll try him."
    I thought she wanted to
say something else, but another customer got her attention, and I
finished my drink and meal without speaking to her again.
    * * *
    The southern tip of downtown ended at the bridge Edie
mentioned, which aroed over a dry riverbed and a stagnant harbor.
Fishing and lobster boats were beached at peculiar angles on the
sandbars by the low tide. No one was on the docks, and I had the
feeling that the boats hadn't been anywhere recently, even when the
water level was more cooperative.
    I drove over the bridge and south another mile or so,
the road curving left to create a "scenic overlook." I
pulled the Prelude into the small parking area but left the engine
running. Getting out and walking to the railing, I looked down a
bluff perhaps forty feet high onto rocks the size of Buicks. Given
the tide, most of the rocks were exposed, scumlines around their
middles. There was a freshening sea breeze, the smell of salt heavy
and bracing in the air. A couple of long-haul barges were sloughing
toward Boston, but no pleasure craft, motor or sail, despite the nice
weather.
    Back in the car, I left the lot and continued south.
Taking the next right, I measured off two miles before realizing I
must have missed the Plymouth Willows sign that should have been on
my left. I came instead to the “gore," as Edie had called it,
a deep swamp surrounded by cattails and reeds, the road hooking left
over an old wooden bridge spanning it. There were tire tracks at the
edge of the mocha water, cars probably parking there at night as boys
with new driver's licenses tried to