Crimson Shore (Agent Pendergast, #15)(33)

“I, myself, am not fond of animal stories.”

Lake rolled his eyes. Pendergast was such an odd duck. “That’s the first time I’ve heard Moby Dick dismissed as an animal story.”

“Getting back to the subject at hand, Mr. Lake. Your merchant marine background was rather difficult for me to discover. Strange that, in a seaport town like Exmouth, few know of it.”

“I’m a private man.”

“Nor did the subject come up in your earlier recitative concerning your past. The one you gave me in the restaurant at the Inn.”

Lake shrugged. “I’ve gotten used to not telling it. It doesn’t fit in with being an artist, somehow.”

“I see. I’ve discovered that Dana Dunwoody, before he went to law school, also worked in the merchant marine on VLCCs.”

“I didn’t know that.”

“Did you ever happen to work on the same ship?”

“No, we did not.”

“How well do you know Mr. Dunwoody?”

“Not well. He’s not my cup of tea. A small-time, small-town, ethically challenged lawyer.”

“Did you know he, too, has a tattoo—of an anchor, on the back of one hand?”

“That’s a common enough tattoo for merchant mariners. You think Dunwoody and I are in some sort of tattoo conspiracy?”

“The other thing I found curiously hard to discover, and which you also neglected to tell me, is that you have deep roots in Exmouth. Your great-great-grandfather came up from Boston to Exmouth to marry a local woman. He was lost at sea in 1845, leaving a wife with a child. She moved back to Boston and that ended your family’s connection with the town until you moved here thirty years ago.”

Lake stared at Pendergast. “Is this supposed to be relevant?”

“Do you know your great-great-grandmother’s maiden name?”

“No.”

“Dunwoody.”

“Jesus. Really? Lord, I had no idea. But there are a lot of Dunwoodys around here. Too many, in fact.”

“Your last show in Boston, at Gleason Fine Art on Newbury Street, does not appear to have done well.”

“In a bad economy, art is the first thing to suffer.”

“And is it true, as local rumor has it, that you are presently short of commissions?”

“What are you driving at?” But Lake was, in fact, beginning to see just what the man was driving at. He felt himself losing his temper.

“Just this: Are you having financial difficulties, Mr. Lake?”

“I’m perfectly comfortable financially! I don’t live the high life and I can weather a downturn in the market.”

“Was the wine collection insured?”

“It was a listed asset on my homeowner’s policy.”

“Have you collected on the policy?”

“Not yet, but I hope to God you’re not implying insurance fraud!”

“So you submitted a claim.”

“Absolutely.”

“For how much?”

“One hundred and ninety thousand dollars. It’s all documented. I’d rather have the wine back, thank you very much. That’s your job, by the way—not asking me a bunch of offensive and irrelevant questions. Digging up ancient dirt on my girlfriend, for God’s sake. Are you accusing me of working in cahoots with that jackass lawyer, who happens to be my seventeenth cousin eleven times removed, to steal my own wine? Bringing you into the case just for show? Christ, don’t make me sorry I hired you!”

Carole squeezed his hand. “Darling, please.” Too late, Lake realized he was shouting.

Pendergast continued to look at them, his face the color of ice, eyes reflecting the dying light. “In any investigation, ninety-nine percent of the information gathered is irrelevant. In the search for that one percent, many offensive questions must be asked and many people aggravated. Nothing personal. Good day, Mr. Lake. Ms. Hinterwasser.”

Lake, deflated, stood beside Carole and watched the dark figure of Pendergast walk down the hill toward his car.





19



A miasma hung over the marshes as A. X. L. Pendergast moved through the salt grass, a dark shape appearing and disappearing among the thick, swaying blades. At one o’clock in the morning, it was dead low tide and the mudflats were exposed, shining in the occasional patches of moonlight exposed by swift-moving clouds. The flats exhaled a sulfurous, dead-fish odor that combined with the tendrils of mist to form a stench that congealed on hair and skin. Pendergast carried with him a rolled-up map that he had hand-drafted earlier in the day, based on marine charts, USGS maps, NOAA wind and current charts, and his own observations.

The Exmouth salt marshes covered about twelve thousand acres behind the Crow Island barrier. This was where the Exmouth and the Metacomet Rivers came together on their way to the sea, creating a fantastical maze of marshes, channels, islands, and brackish pools before opening into shallow bays that extended to the sea around the northern end of Crow Island. About half of the marshlands had been designated a wildlife area. The remainder were largely inaccessible and considered wasteland, unbuildable because of environmental restrictions, plagued with greenhead flies in summer, and not interesting enough from a wildlife perspective to be included in the refuge. Their value lay solely in the clamming areas of the mudflats, exposed at low tide, but even a large portion of those were almost inaccessible by boat or on foot.