Jay Martin had been dead a week when Detective McPhee, at the prompting of numerous townspeople, decided to pay a visit to Mary Niven.
“You oughta talk to Mary Niven. I know she’s halfway ‘cross town from where it all happened but she doesn’t miss a trick. She’ll know something about it.” That had been Hal Jacobs, a local contractor who lived on the same street where the Martins had their summer place, and who’d done work on their property the previous winter.
And Hal’s wife Sue had said, on another occasion: “What you should do is talk with Miss Niven. Me, I can’t keep track of half the young people who come and go in the summer, but for some reason Mary knows them all. She’ll tell you who broke so and so’s heart in 1932, and then she’ll tell you that the Richards kid got caught smoking marijuana at the playground last week.”
Even Detective McPhee’s own wife, who’d lived in town longer than he had, told him that talking to Mary would be a prudent move. “Just pay her a visit, Don. You don’t even need to ask her about the murder. I’m sure she’ll bring it up. She knows everything.”
“Maybe I’ll swing by her place tomorrow,” he conceded.
And he did. She lived on Rosehip Lane, which ran from Harbor Road to Main street, rising on a sandy bluff to provide a million-dollar view of Cape Cod bay. Mary Niven’s cottage, gray-shingled and festooned with pink roses, was an inheritance from her parents, which meant they’d probably paid about fifteen thousand for it back in the days of whale-bone corsets and oil lamps. Nowadays, fifteen thousand would rent you a two-bedroom beach cottage for a month in the off-season.
The detective parked his car on the shell-littered drive. He saw a first-floor curtain move and by the time he’d reached the white freshly-painted door it was open and Mary Niven, her milky blue eyes peering over reading glasses, said “Hello Detective, what a pleasant surprise!”
They sat out back on painted iron chairs, drank homemade lemonade (too sweet), and admired the day. There was a cool seabreeze--there always was in town--but it was still an unseasonably hot eighty-eight degrees; the back of Detective McPhee’s collar was damp with sweat. Mary Niven, on the other hand, looked cool in a long flower-print dress and a thick cardigan. Why did old people wear sweaters in the summertime?
“I’m surprised you came here, Detective,” Mary Niven said in her pinched girlish voice. “I thought you’d be busy on the case.”
“That’s partly why I’m here Miss Niven--“
“Mary, please.”
“Okay, Mary. I’ve heard it on good authority that you’re the keeper of the secrets in this town. I was told to come to you and find the dirt.”
“Oh gosh. I hope I don’t disappoint you. I’ve known the Martin’s for years, of course, and Jay since he was a little boy, but I’ve no idea who would’ve done such a thing to him.”
“Well, frankly, neither do we.”
“Rumor has it, his throat was cut,” she said in a stage-whisper.
“Yes. We think with a razor, although the weapon has not been found.”
“And he was alone in the house at the time?” Mary placed her glass of lemonade on the table between them and leaned in a fraction, her head tilted to favor her better ear, the left.
“He’d been alone in the house for a few days. His mother was on a trip to Hawaii with her sister, and Mr. Martin was at work in the city. He still consults, apparently.”
“Does quite well at it, I hear. Now, when you say Jay was alone, you mean he was alone in the days leading up to the murder, because unless he cut his own throat, he wasn’t alone at the time of the murder.” Mary Niven smiled, showing two rows of tea-stained teeth.
The detective expelled two breaths in the approximation of an appreciative laugh. “Right. By alone I just mean his parents weren’t at the house with him.”
“But he’d had guests, I presume?”
“Not the day of the murder, that we know of. But the day before, yes, he’d had someone over.”
“I would guess that it wasn’t Carli Clark. Was it the Russian girl from the tavern?”
Now the detective laughed for real. “So it’s true what they say about you.”
“That I know everyone’s business in town? No, it’s not true, otherwise I’d be able to tell you what had happened to poor Jay, and which one of the Pearson boys egged my house last Halloween, and I’d have possession of Charlotte Pruitt’s potato salad recipe, and, alas, I do not. I do, however, as do any number of folks in this town, know that Jay’s been involved with both Carli Clark and Ksesia--what is it?--Poliakoff this summer. And I know, or rather I suspect, that Carli is pregnant with his child.”
“She is pregnant. That we know. Whether it belongs to Jay or not is anyone’s guess.”
Mary Niven adjusted an embroidered handkerchief that was tucked into the sleeve of her sweater. “Carli must be about five months pregnant which means that the child was conceived sometime in February. Now it happens to be my opinion that Carli has only ever slept with Jay Martin and it’s most folk’s opinion that Carli would just as soon use her best dress to clean her father’s truck as she would sleep with a townie. In February, Jay Martin was the only summer resident in town. At least the only summer resident that was Carli’s age. He spent his whole break at his parent’s house just to be with her. I’d wager that conception of the child was in February.”
“Then what do you think happened this summer? They haven’t been seen together much.”
“First off, Jay found out that Carli was pregnant. I don’t think that his plan for senior year at Bates included being a father, do you? The second thing that happened was Ksesia happened; much more alluring than Carli, and much less pregnant.”
“How do you know for sure that Jay and Ksesia were an item?” The detective stumbled over the Russian girl’s name, attempting to pronounce the first and silent S.
