Nantucket Grand (23 page)

“Daisy, listen—”

“I shouldn't even be talking to you. Not without my lawyer present. Besides…if they see me—you shouldn't have come here. Just stay away. Stick your little gold star on the front of your notebook and get away from me.”

She yanked open the door and folded herself into the driver's seat.

“Daisy, listen to me…if you have information about this case, you have to share it with the police. That's the law. And it could help you. You could testify later—make some kind of deal. But it's also—it's your duty. It's your moral obligation. You just talked about Oscar's ghost haunting me. How about you?”

“I'm out of it, Chief. I'm done.” She keyed the engine. “As for Oscar's ghost—if he wants to haunt me, he's going to have to take a number and get on line.”

She revved the engine to an angry shriek and the rear wheels dug up a spray of dirt as she took off.

Alana Trikilis walked up to me as I stared after the vanished car.

“I'm worried about Ms. DeHart,” she said. “I think she's real near the edge.”

“Yeah,” I nodded sympathetically. And I was thinking, Daisy's on the edge, all right—and what I need most right now is to push her over it.

Who was she talking about? Her stepfather? Or one of his cronies? And what were they really doing, and why were they trying to manipulate the legal system? If any of that was even happening, if Daisy wasn't busy spinning conspiracy theories. People as superficially smart and sane as Daisy had been convinced over the years that the moon walk was a hoax, AIDS was invented by the CIA, and the Sandy Hook shooting was a government plot to promote more gun control laws. You didn't have to scratch too far below the surface to find the crazy. Maybe Daisy was just one more example. That was the most likely explanation. She had a lot of anger and resentment to work through, and I had a tough, complex criminal case tied up neatly, with a bow. I was happy to leave it at that.

But I was still mulling it over when I drove out to Polpis that evening, for one of my literary nights with Jane Stiles.

Chapter Twenty-seven

On Polpis Harbor Beach

“There's a lot more going on than meets the eye,” Jane said. “There always is. There has to be.”

I shook my head, exhaling a quiet laugh. “In your books, you mean.”

She gave me a stern look. “Life imitates art.”

“Not in police work.”

“I told you all the different crimes this year were connected and you didn't believe me then, either. But it was true.”

“Fair enough. But now you're saying they're connected two ways, which frankly gives me a headache tonight. I have no idea what the second one could be.”

“But you have to find out because that's the really important connection. That's the one someone's hiding. And Daisy's the key to it.”

We were eating ice cream cones. I had driven out to Polpis with sandwiches in hand, but all either of us wanted was a treat. It was a perfect early summer night and we drove to the 'Sconset Market for a couple of overpriced scoops. The ice cream was good and the market hadn't changed at all in decades. It was a pleasant excursion, driving along the eastern edge of the island, skirting Sesachacha Pond, cutting through the old Sankaty Head golf course and then running parallel to the bluffs of Baxter Road into the little village.

We strolled out into the center of 'Sconset, which consisted of a small rotary, two restaurants, a liquor store, the post office, and the market, with the little rectangle of park beside it. Kids were cruising by on bicycles and you could see that the rich people had already started to arrive for the season, tall and handsome and blond, with perfectly dressed kids and great hair, talking about tennis dates and tee times and Muffy's divorce.

Jane pointed at two big blondes in tennis clothes, climbing out of a Lexus SUV.

“Look at that hair,” she whispered to me. “If I had that hair, I'd be driving that Lexus.”

“But you don't want a Lexus.”

“That's not the point. I could have whatever I wanted, with hair like that. I mean what else do they have going for them?”

“They're pretty.”

“They're okay looking. Really check them out.”

I did. She was right—regular, ordinary features. The bodies weren't much better. “They have some cellulite happening.”

“And they're not that bright, either,” she said. “I wouldn't exactly call that a high water mark in political discourse.” She nodded toward one of the kids scampering by in a “John Kerry For President—of France” tee-shirt.

I nodded. “Someone bought him that item.”

“Someone bought it for his big brother. And kept it for the next kid.”

“Dumb and sentimental. Great combination.”

“Doesn't matter. She's got the hair.”

We strolled back to the car and waited on line and drove down under the pedestrian bridge to look at the water. An old Volkswagen beetle drove by—a powder blue convertible, nineteen seventies vintage.

“That's the car I want,” Jane said.

“Nice.”

“It just reminds me of—I used to drive one of those. I loved it.”

“I'm not sure you need world-class hair to get an old bug.”

“Maybe not. But my ex-husband was the mechanic in the family. His idea of a fun Sunday afternoon was climbing under the car to replace the solenoid. Whatever that is.”

“I don't think cars even have them anymore.”

We drove back to Polpis and took turns eating our sandwiches (Turkey Terrifics from Provisions) and reading aloud.

Before Jane started her story she said. “I have a poem for you! I was thinking of it all day, looking at all the self-important Somebodies strutting around town. It's Emily Dickinson…

I'm Nobody! Who are you?

Are you—Nobody—too?

Then there's a pair of us!

Don't tell! they'd advertise—you know!

How dreary—to be—Somebody!

How public—like a Frog–

To tell one's name—the livelong June–

To an admiring Bog!”

I laughed. “That's perfect. I love that. I can't believe I never saw that poem before.”

“Apparently she was at some party and all the men were bloviating about their writing and politics and whatever and she was just like—get me out of here.”

“Wow.”

“She's my favorite hermit.”

“And I'm supposed to follow that poem?”

She smiled. “You're supposed to try.”

“Well, there's one I wrote about you—actually something you told me this winter—about going back to the town where you lived when you were a little kid, before your family moved here? Checking out your old house, looking up at your bedroom window. I did that, too. My dad owned so many houses over the years I could make it a tour: maps to the drunken screenwriter's homes. So anyway I finally wrote something about it.”

She set her sandwich down and took a sip of wine.

“Shoot.”

“That might not be the best thing to say to a trigger-happy local cop.”

“Fine. Proceed with some thoughtful community policing, Officer.”

“Yes, ma'am. It's called ‘Homecoming.'” I pulled the folded sheet of paper out of my back pocket.

This happiness is small and fragile

Hope and irony crowded together

Like a Baptist and an abortion doctor

Carpooling

This happiness is like returning home

And seeing how your hometown has changed

The new school

The mall where the movie theatre

Used to be;

The hardware store is gone

Victim of the modern world—

It sells software now

You saw the end of the sign and thought

“Something is still the same”

Too soon.

Still, some things remain

The big sycamores

Still sprinkle the sidewalk with shade

Your house is still there.

It's someone else's house now;

They've added a garage

Someone is sleeping behind your window

Probably someone like you:

A little girl who can't imagine ever leaving

Ever coming back, looking for a homecoming

Among the busy strangers

On the new streets

And finding it

In the dry, yeasty smell from the bakery

(It's still there)

Carried through the dark air

On the morning wind;

Finding it

In a smooth piece of glass

Stained amber by sunrise

In the vacant lot

Where your mother warned you

Not to run barefoot.

She lifted her glass in a toast. “Nice. Especially the end. I never really felt at home there, though. After we moved here it didn't even seem real anymore. It was just—I can't describe it.”

“You always say that and then you describe things beautifully.”

“Okay. It was like someone had described it to me, and I had this super clear idea of the place from what they said but it wasn't like the real place at all. That was the shock going back. The town in my head was so much nicer. And the hardware store turning into a software store. You remembered that.”

“That image summed things up perfectly.”

“I was going to use it somewhere. But I donate it to you. For your birthday.”

“Best present ever.”

We sat eating quietly for a while. The crickets orchestrated the night outside, their own amateur Phillip Glass symphony. Planes heading for Boston and New York droned by overhead.

Jane assembled her papers. In the recent installments of her new Madeline Clark novel,
Poverty Point,
Maddy had searched the house where the murder took place, after the police—under the inept leadership of Police Chief Bill Blote—turned the place upside down and found nothing. Maddy, with her tireless ant-like industry and the patience of a fly-fisherman, had dug out a broken bracelet from the crack between two wide floorboards.

“I stole that from you,” Jane confessed. “The hair clip. Tit for tat.”

Anyway, Maddy instantly recognized the double pyramid slashed vertically by a cursive capital “S” because Maddy's ex-husband—like Jane's—had been a Scientologist for many years. Jane's ex had left the church in disgust when he finally found out the details of its wacky theology, but Maddy's remained stalwart.

Chief Blote showed zero interest in this new evidence, of course. The man “wouldn't recognize an elephant if it was stepping on his foot.” Blote's view: the bracelet could have been there for years, could have belonged to anyone, could even have been placed there to throw the police off the scent.

“But he would have had to assume you'd find it,” Maddy said sweetly.

As always happened in Jane's books, the blundering pompous clowns who made up the NPD arrested the wrong person. The evidence was circumstantial and the eyewitness was a drunk. But there was nothing Maddy could do about it. She had no suspect of her own.

Until she did some last-minute marketing.

Here's the end of the chapter she read me
:

After weeks of false leads and dead ends, “red herrings and rotten bluefish,” as Maddy called them, she finally solved the puzzle of Raymond Scully's murder in a single moment, driving into the Stop&Shop parking lot.

As usual she was cruising the crowded tarmac trying to find the spot closest to the store. She could walk for hours when she was in the mood, but she hated any unnecessary exercise and dreaded seeing people she knew among the cars and shopping carts. There were all the people she didn't like, and the acquaintances who would invariably want to “catch up.” But the worst were the old friends who insisted on having actual conversations in the canned goods aisle. You could lose an hour or two in the soul-sapping fluorescent light, listening to someone's divorce update or the tribulations of the Whalers' last road trip.

Maddy was on her third circuit when she saw Bradley Morrell wheeling a cart full of grocery bags to his car. An artist who specialized in sea gulls, sailboats at anchor, and cobblestone street scenes, Bradley was always talking about moving to New York where his “real” work (messy abstractions in mud brown and exhaust purple) would be taken seriously. Of course he never left. Nantucket was the capital city of procrastination. It ate away at peoples' ambitions like powderpost beetles chewing away at an old house. Everyone was going to write that book, use all the sound equipment in their basement to finally cut a demo record, get a portfolio of their photographs together—after the summer season, next year, on the first of never.

It didn't matter to Bradley Morrell; he was a trust fund baby who could afford to indulge his airs and affectations. He was normally quite useless, but he was going to come in handy today—Maddy could take his parking space!

She idled the car, watching him.

He lifted the hatchback of his SUV and started loading in the paper bags. His cell phone rang and, distracted for a second, he banged his head on the sharp edge of the raised panel. He grunted in pain, closed his eyes and moved his forehead up to touch the exact spot where he had clouted himself.

Maddy gasped, the real thing, inhaling so hard the breath scraped her throat. She knew that gesture very well. Derrick had done it all the time. It was called Contact Assist, a technique for dealing with injuries developed by L. Ron Hubbard in the 1960s.

Brady Morrell was a Scientologist. She had his clear bracelet in her pocket. She stared at him as he finished loading the car.

She knew Brady was the killer now. All she had to do was
prove
it.

Jane set the papers aside. “Well?”

“Excellent. I especially liked the word ‘scrape'—people gasp all the time in fiction but writers don't usually bother to describe what it actually feels like.”

She grinned. “I gasped a lot to test it out. That hurts!”

I finished my wine. “I just wish things could work out so neatly in an actual investigation.”

“You found the bullet that killed Todd Macy—and the rifle it came from.”

“True. But, ultimately, Blount confessed and that's how about ninety percent of all real cases get solved. Not by finding some bracelet and the amateur sleuth making the connection because she happens to be familiar with the killer's weirdo religious sect. And by the way—the real police chief of Nantucket would have found that bracelet. Or at least acknowledged that it was important. I mean—I found the hair clip!”

“But you have to have dumbo cops in a cozy mystery. That doesn't hurt your feelings, does it?”

“No, no. It's funny. Blote without the ‘a'—so fat he can't even spell his own name.”

She nodded. “That was a little on the nose.”

“Loose ends,” I said, “that's what you're missing.”

“But that's why people read mysteries! It's the one place in life where all the loose ends get tied up.”

“We need Madeline Clark to do some digging. Maybe at the Atheneum. She always finds some vital clue in an old library book.”

“That only happened twice!”

“Or the Hall of Records.”

“Okay, okay. But Maddy is an expert researcher. You have to give her that.”

“Unlike the Blote and his Keystone Kops, who let her do all the work and then take the credit.”

“That happens in real life. It's the number one thing that happens. I worked for two years as an executive secretary at American Express in New York. I did all the work and my boss took all the credit.”