Janice wrote $125,000 on her notepad and shifted the telephone to the other ear.
“—but a sale’s a sale. She saw this house in Eastham. Your listing, rotten location, right on Route Six, rotten location, rotten little rathole house. But if
she
likes it, we call it Convenience with Cape Cod Charm. I suppose anything’s better than New York.”
Janice drew a big apple. Inside it she wrote $7,500, standard commission on $125,000. Then she wrote $3,750, the share her office would receive in a co-brokering arrangement. Then she wrote $1,875, her share of the office share.
“Could you show it?” asked Phyllis Baxter.
Through the window, Janice saw her husband hefting a leaky trash bag out of the back of his Chevy.
She flipped through her book and found the listing. “I’ll meet you there in half an hour. Gotta run…. Geoffrey, I hope you’re planning to clean the fish blood off the floor.”
Geoff stuck his head into her office. “Some welcome for the hunter-gatherer.”
She heard his footsteps thump down the hallway to the little kitchenette at the end. The bag of fish hit the sink, and the refrigerator door popped open.
From his office, Doug’s voice echoed off polished hard wood floors and white-painted walls, “Just what I want—more bluefish.”
“Did somebody say bluefish?” Dickerson came down from his upstairs office. “I’ll take two. Cook ’em on the grill with a little mayonnaise.”
Geoff came back to the front office—three desks, only one occupied on a slow day in a slower market. “We hit a blitz up at Billingsgate.”
Doug came through the French doors that separated his office from the agents’, the old dining room from the parlor. “How you holdin’ up, Geoff?”
“Life goes on.”
Dickerson put a fatherly hand on his shoulder. “Two deaths in a week… tough.”
“I’m trying to keep it in perspective.”
Did they mean
any
of this? Geoff always handed out bluefish to everyone after a blitz, but that wasn’t why he was here. Janice could see it in his eyes. Now that Rake was dead, he controlled more land. He could rewrite the deal to get better terms, or he could kill it completely. She didn’t know what he planned, and she didn’t think he knew either… until now.
On her notepad, she drew the island once more. Then her father said “Soooo,” which usually meant he was going to ask a blunt question. She raised her pen from the page.
“
Soooo
, Janice tells me that before the… sad events of the last week or so, you’d done some sketches.”
Doug sat on the edge of a desk and began to swing his leg. “We can’t tell you how pleased that makes us.”
“Keep your lime green pants on,” said Geoff.
“We all have to keep our pants on,” said Dickerson. “We don’t clear probate for six months. But if we get our ducks in a row—”
“I’m not worrying about ducks.”
Doug’s leg stopped swinging. Dickerson ran his hand through his chin whiskers.
“Rake showed me some things the night he was killed,” Geoff said.
“Killed?” said Doug.
“I think he was run off the road.”
Janice scratched out her sketch of the island. This was worse than she thought. “Who killed him, Geoff?”
“I don’t know. Maybe the people who followed us in a boat this morning.”
“And who were
they
, Geoff?”
“Fishermen.” Doug laughed. “They saw you in your Grady White and figured you knew where the fish were.”
“I don’t think so,” said Geoff.
And Dickerson Bigelow blew up, lost it entirely. Once, he would have stayed and argued or cajoled or played the bullying businessman until he’d brought Geoff around. But he was getting old. And he was no longer in control. The best he could do was sputter, “Janice, you married a damn fool,” and stomp up the stairs.
A door slammed, then popped open again. “And tell him to keep his damn bluefish!”
Slam
. The whole house shook.
“Dad’s offended,” said Janice.
“If Geoff’s accusing us, I’m offended, too,” said Doug.
“I’m not accusing, I’m speculating.”
Doug picked up the phone. “So speculate with the state police. According to them, everything about the accident was consistent with the maneuver to avoid an animal—speed, skid, direction of travel. No evidence of foul play.”
“Have they speculated on the log of the
Mayflower?”
asked Geoff.
“A Rake Hilyard hoax.”
“Now Rake’s dead and I inherit half of his property—”
“And the hoax,” muttered Janice.
“And now,” added Douglas, “you think you owe it to him to do what he would have done with his property, even if that is exactly nothing?”
Geoff looked at Janice. “Your brother understands better than you do.”
Doug came over to Geoff. “We need to let the Conservation Commission walk Jack’s Island next week. We can’t even
think
of the next step until they’ve marked off the wetlands and we’ve settled those arguments.”
“I won’t stop you, Doug. But don’t be too broken up if
they
stop you.”
Janice couldn’t take all this civility any longer. She shoved a few papers into her purse and took her MLS book. “My father’s right. I married a damn fool. I have an appointment.”
iii.
“Hi, Jan. It’s so good to see you again.”
This must be Phyllis Baxter. Janice couldn’t quite remember. But there were the earrings, bigger than doughnuts, more like inner tubes. And the teeth—big, square horse teeth set in a mouth that was always open. She remembered now.
Phyllis introduced her client. Janice shook the young woman’s hand—very soft, very white. Jet black hair that made her skin look even whiter, and a white raincoat, though it was a sunny afternoon. Her height might have been impressive if not for the tall-girl slouch and the twitchy way about her. Like a battered wife.
It was none of Janice’s business. Show her the house. If she liked it, sell her the house, then pity her because she couldn’t find anything better.
They exchanged a few pleasantries—very few, because they couldn’t be heard above the traffic on Route 6. Then they went inside.
“Isn’t this
cozy,”
bellowed Phyllis, still competing with the roar of the traffic outside.
About as cozy as the inside of a stove carton, thought Janice.
“Is there a fireplace?” asked the woman.
Janice looked at the listing sheet. “I’m afraid not.”
Phyllis peered through the little windows above the kitchen sink. “Your kids’ll like the backyard.”
Janice looked out the windows by the television, at four lanes of traffic. “Just keep them away from the front.”
Phyllis gave her a scowl. It wasn’t their job to worry about people’s kids, unless the people could afford to give the kids something better. “What are the taxes here?” she asked, trying to keep it going.
“Four hundred.”
“Very reasonable.”
“For this place, robbery,” said Janice.
Phyllis asked for the listing sheet, as though it might hold the key to the sale. “Well,
this
is a little bit of history. It says this house was moved from Billingsgate Island. Imagine that.”
“Half the houses on Cape Cod have been moved,” said Janice, “from Billingsgate, from Monomoy Island, from one side of a lot to another…. We can find her a nicer house.”
“We’ll do our best.” Phyllis gave Janice a smile that could have bitten a board nail in half.
Janice said she could think of a few places in this price range, and she promised to call Phyllis. The young woman thanked Janice for her frankness and made only one stipulation: a fireplace.
“I’d love to be able to sit with my kids beside a roaring fire. Fires are happy things.”
Everybody should have a fireplace, thought Janice, and a husband who didn’t hit her… or play the damn fool when the big moment of his life arrived. The more houses they built, the better the chances that this poor woman would get her fireplace.
iv.
“Now, what’s this I hear about a metal detector on Billingsgate?”
“I report what I see.”
“You can interpret, too, I hope.” John M. Nance tapped a golf ball toward the hole on the putting green in his backyard. It rolled to within an inch of the cup and stopped. “Otherwise, my money is wasted.”
“The night Clara dies, Rake says he has to find the log. The night Rake dies, he visits Geoff with something. And the day after Rake’s buried, Geoff’s on Billingsgate Shoals with a metal detector.”
“Do you think the log is buried on Billingsgate?”
“Maybe.” The bland-looking young man wore a gray Puma warm-up suit with yellow piping. He chewed Juicy Fruit gum and dropped a yellow wrapper onto the putting green.
Nance was in mid-putt. His putter stopped. He glared at the wrapper.
The young man began to explain why the log might be on Billingsgate, but Nance’s eyes were on the wrapper, which he studied until the young man picked it up.
“The log is
not
on Billingsgate Shoals, Mr. Lambeth. We’ve known that from the beginning.” Nance followed through and missed his putt. “Your initial report said this Geoff Hilyard would go for Bigelow’s deal. Now he’s going after the log. That could kill the deal, though we don’t know how.”
“So he’s changing his mind.”
Nance tapped another ball. “This much is certain: if he goes for the log, it would be better if we found it first. If he goes for the deal, we
have
to find it first.”
“Where will he look next?” The young man unfolded another stick of gum and put the wrapper in his pocket.
“That’s what I pay your agency for.”
“We do industrial spying… corporate intelligence. We don’t even like divorce work. We’re new to this.”
“So am I.” Nance tapped another shot at the cup. “But if Hilyard’s following the history, he’ll turn to Sam Hilyard next. Sam holds the key.”
June 1776
Sam Hilyard aimed the glass at the horizon, where a tall tree of sails reflected the dusk. “She’s carryin’ a full spread, Pa. Royals, t’gallants, mains’ls, tops’ls.”
“She’s the
Somerset
, all right, lad. How far?”
The motion of the
Serenity
made the glass unsteady, so Sam wrapped an arm around a shroud and rested it on a ratline. “She’s hull down.”
“And night comin’ faster than she is.” Ned clapped his son on the back. “We beat ’er again, lad. We sleep in Boston tonight.”
Nothing in this rebellious world made a boy feel prouder than to sail with his father under letters of marque. Nothing made him feel more of a man than to elude once more the
Somerset
, sixty-four-gun ship of the line. And nothing better slaked his thirst for revenge than to raid British shipping and Loyalist havens along the Canadian coast. The Hilyards had become privateers.
Sam looked astern, at the prize ship lumbering along in their wake. The Halifax-bound merchantman
Ramshead
had surrendered without a fight, which was all for the best. The
Serenity
carried four six-pounders and a pair of swivels, but the Hilyards much preferred bluff to cannon fire. “Will we get her into Boston, too?”
“Canvas, paint, English-made nails—a cargo to bring a fair price on Long Wharf,” said Charlie Kwennit. “With Square Stubbs in command, give no worry to the
Ramshead.”
“Worry instead about the captain of that bloody giant out there.” Ned pointed toward the sails of the
Somerset
. “We been slippin’ his blockade a year and a half now.”
“Do you think he knows who we are?”
“Know who we are?” Ned Hilyard gave out with the kind of laugh to fill a son with confidence. At fifty-nine, he was still a young man in step and strength. He even looked younger, having shaved his mottled beard. But more than a shave, thought Sam, it was his father’s refusal to be cowed by anything that gave him the vigor of youth. “I damn well
hope
he knows who we are. I’d be sore disappointed if he didn’t.”
Sam laughed with his father and felt the gentle roll of the sea, speaking to him through the soles of his bare feet and soothingly along his backbone, as though he were another singing line on the
Serenity
. He watched the night rising from the eastern horizon and crossing the sky like a great canopy to cover them. And he could think of no better place to be, no matter that the
Somerset
stalked them.
ii.
Dr. William Thayer could think of no worse place to be than the sick bay of the
Somerset
, even when the task was as simple as lancing a boil on a sailor’s neck. He barely touched his knife to the reddened mound of flesh before the blood splattered and the tallow-colored core came popping out.
The sailor, a hairy Devonshire ape named Tom Dodd, asked to see what had caused him such pain. With a cotton cloth, Thayer removed the festerment from the facing of his coat, where it had come to rest. Dodd studied it, nodded approvingly, and said that a core the size of his little toe should be good for an extra tot of rum.
Thayer agreed. Rum was one of the few things that made life tolerable for any of them, especially for a ship’s doctor who practiced on pox-ridden old drunks snatched from waterfront pubs, on homesick farm boys who had sought excitement but found wormy beef, floggings, and forecastle buggery instead, or on career sailors who considered this misery their happiest home. Dodd was among the last, and he knew all the tricks for gaining an advantage or an extra tot.
But Thayer had seen enough of Tom Dodd. The only rum he would be getting was soaked into a cloth and used as a poultice. Thayer said the rum was good for drawing out the poison, of which there was a long measure in the look that Dodd gave him before going off to torment some young seaman.
Thayer took a few swallows of rum himself and went on deck to clean the stench of Tom Dodd from his nostrils.
“A fine evening, sir. Marvelous twilight.”
Captain George Ourry studied the western horizon through his glass. “I am no connoisseur of twilights.”