The Bone House - Brian Freeman [113]
'Who, Pete? Well enough. He's lived here forever. Tough old guy. Sucks what happened to his family.'
'Did you ever see him with Mark Bradley?'
'Pete and Mark? Don't think so.'
'I just wonder why Bradley would have killed him,' Cab said.
'Word is that they had a fight.'
'About what?'
Larch shrugged. 'You're the cop.'
'Do you have any guesses?'
'Beats me. I mean, you think you know people, but you don't. I thought Mark was cool. My daughter liked him as a teacher. Then all this shit with Tresa happened last year. Like I say, people surprise you.'
'Peter Hoffman must have been pretty upset about the accusations involving Bradley and Tresa. He was close to Delia Fischer, wasn't he?'
'Oh, yeah,' Larch agreed, bobbing his head. 'Pete was like a guardian angel to Delia and the girls. It's going to be hard on her with him gone. I hope he left her a little something in his will, you know?'
'What about Glory?' Cab asked. 'What was the buzz about her?'
Larch's brow furrowed into large wrinkles under his cap. 'I'm not sure what you're getting at.'
'I heard she liked to walk on the wild side.'
'Sure, Glory could be a handful. Hard to believe her and Tresa were sisters, you know? Tresa's a bookworm, and Glory was a party girl. That doesn't mean she was asking for trouble.'
'Of course not.' Cab added, 'Were there any rumors about Glory and Mark Bradley?'
'What, you think he was doing them both? That's news to me. Anything's possible, but I never heard about it.'
'What about Peter Hoffman? Could he have known whether something was going on between those two?'
Larch shook his head, if Pete knew that, he would have taken Bradley's head off. He would have told Delia and the sheriff, too. It would have been all over the county.'
Cab nodded. Larch was right. 'I appreciate your talking with me.'
'No problem.' Larch opened the door of the Corvette, and the rain was loud outside. He climbed out and then bent down to shove his head in the car again. 'Hey, you really need to get over to the island tonight?'
'Why, can you take me?'
'Sure, I do private fishing charters all the time. It'll cost you, though.'
'How much?'
'Two hundred bucks. I'll take you round trip, or I can drop you and you can spend the night.' He added, 'Or you could let me take the Vette out for a spin, and then it's no charge.'
Cab grinned. 'I don't really need to go over there tonight. It can wait.'
Larch pulled a ferry brochure from his pocket and slid a pen from the top of his clipboard. He scribbled something on the brochure and handed it to Cab. 'That's my phone number. If you change your mind, give me a call. I live over in Gills Rock. I can have you there in less than an hour.'
Cab glanced at the sky. 'It'll be dark soon.'
'Night doesn't bother me. That's when you get the biggest walleyes.' Larch winked. 'Mark Bradley would be pretty surprised to see you at his house tonight.'
'What's that mean?'
'Hey, she's over eighteen now, so it's not like there's anything you guys can do about it. Even so, it tells you what a piece of shit he is.'
Cab's eyes narrowed. 'I'm still not following you.'
'Let's just say Mark probably has some company in his bed tonight,' Larch told him. 'His wife came over on the four o'clock. She's gone for the night. So who races up to the dock like she's a NASCAR driver to get on the last ferry? Tresa Fischer.'
'You're telling me that Tresa went over to the island tonight?'
Larch nodded. 'That's right. Makes you wonder, doesn't it?'
Water pummeled Troy. Water was everywhere.
The twenty-footer clawed into the waves, but beyond the top of the peninsula, the boat rocked like a toy in the ocean. The headwind bit at his exposed skin, and the sky gushed rain down as heavy as a waterfall. He stayed west beyond the worst currents of the passage, but even in the calm of Green Bay, swells rose up and slammed the boat down so hard that his jaw hurt as the bow landed. His progress was excruciatingly slow. After ten minutes, he thought he'd spent an hour on the bay.
He was cold to his bones. He wore long