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Back Parting Shot Save as PDF
Chapters (68)
  1. Dedication
  2. Title Page
  3. Contents
  4. One
  5. Two
  6. Three
  7. Four
  8. Five
  9. Six
  10. Seven
  11. Eight
  12. Nine
  13. Ten
  14. Eleven
  15. Thirteen
  16. Fourteen
  17. Fifteen
  18. Sixteen
  19. Seventeen
  20. Eighteen
  21. Nineteen
  22. Twenty
  23. Twenty-One
  24. Twenty-Two
  25. Twenty-Three
  26. Twenty-Four
  27. Twenty-Five
  28. Twenty-Six
  29. Twenty-Seven
  30. Twenty-Eight
  31. Twenty-Nine
  32. Thirty
  33. Thirty-One
  34. Thirty-Two
  35. Thirty-Three
  36. Thirty-Four
  37. Thirty-Five
  38. Thirty-Six
  39. Thirty-Seven
  40. Thirty-Eight
  41. Thirty-Nine
  42. Forty
  43. Forty-One
  44. Forty-Two
  45. Forty-Three
  46. Forty-Four
  47. Forty-Five
  48. Forty-Six
  49. Forty-Seven
  50. Forty-Eight
  51. Forty-Nine
  52. Fifty
  53. Fifty-One
  54. Fifty-Two
  55. Fifty-Three
  56. Fifty-Four
  57. Fifty-Five
  58. Fifty-Six
  59. Fifty-Seven
  60. Fifty-Eight
  61. Fifty-Nine
  62. Sixty
  63. Sixty-One
  64. Sixty-Two
  65. Sixty-Three
  66. Sixty-Four
  67. Sixty-Five
  68. Copyright

Duckworth pulled back his jacket and reached for the gun holstered at his side. The last thing he wanted to do was discharge his weapon in the close quarters of this house. Harvey was causing him a lot of grief, but he was not armed. But Duckworth believed he needed the persuasion that his gun would provide to get things under control.

As he was about to draw his weapon, however, the odds got a little more even.

Albert Gaffney, dressed casually in a pair of sweatpants and a T-shirt, had run into the house. He charged Harvey from behind and threw him into a wall, hard enough that the man’s head dented the drywall.

Harvey went down like a rag doll.

He put a hand to his head. “Son of a bitch!”

Albert looked at a somewhat stunned Duckworth and extended a hand to help him to his feet.

“Constance said you had something you wanted to ask me,” he said.

Fifty

FIFTY

CAL

IF I’d known we were going to end up at the movies, I’d have gone back into the beach house for my cell. It was a long time to be without a phone.

After heading into Sandwich for some ice cream, Jeremy continued to complain about the cable not working at Madeline’s place. I grabbed a discarded newspaper on a nearby table and found an ad for a Cape Cod movie complex. The seven o’clock shows were already under way, but we could hit one that started after nine. I handed the paper to Jeremy—he was working on a banana split with enough whipped cream to bury a Volkswagen—and asked him if any of the shows interested him.

He pointed. “That one.”

It was some superhero thing. When I was a kid, the only costumed crime-fighters on my radar were Batman, Superman and Spider-Man. I knew there were more, but they were the only ones I cared about. These days, though, there were so many, it was a wonder there was enough evil in the world to keep them all occupied.

“Yeah, sure,” I said.

“What if someone recognizes me?” he asked. “Like at the hotel?”

When we got back to the car, I gave him the Blue Jays baseball cap he’d worn in the grocery store and told him to keep it pulled down hard until we found our seats and they killed the lights. That seemed to do the trick. No one gave us a second look.

On the way to the theater, Jeremy said, “I could probably come up with a list.”

“Huh?”

“Of people at the party. People you could talk to.”

“Okay,” I said.

“But I don’t know what the point is.”

“Let me worry about that.”

“I mean, it’s not really your job, anyway.”

“I’m an investigator. I investigate.”