Ralph chewed his sandwich ruminatively and cocked a bushy white eyebrow at his granddaughter. “Sarah Mason was a pistol, I’ll tell you that, Meredith. She was a spirited young thing with a steel-trap mind who grew into a grand old dame. She ran the Mason empire—no minor feat for a woman in those days—and sent her son, Joe, to learn the business on the retailing floor. You didn’t fool with Sarah.”
“You knew her?” Merry asked, startled.
“She kicked off the family habit of summering on Nantucket. Bought the ancestral home on the Cliff Road and had it restored—I’d say Sarah Mason single-handedly launched the island’s tourist trade, what with all her New York society friends streaming in for those summer parties. Joe Mason kept up the tradition, and made sure his kids knew their roots were in New England. That’s why Max and I learned to sail together.”
“Ralph Waldo Folger, you do not sail,” Merry said severely. She put down her coffee cup and turned to gaze at his profile. “And if you do, how come you never taught me?”
Her grandfather broke off a bit of bagel and, contrary to philosophy, threw it to the Forster’s tern. “Owning a sailboat and knowing what to do with it are two different things, young woman,” he said. “Somehow I never managed to scrape together the price of the whistle.”
Ralph Waldo viewed Ben Franklin—and his aphorisms—with affection, in part because Franklin’s mother was a Nantucket Folger, albeit of cousinage much removed. He had insisted Merry’s parents give her Abiah Folger’s name, and disliking it, they’d compromised and placed it second. He was the only one who called her by it, and in fact one of the few people alive who knew what her middle name was. Merry exhaled gustily, her breath lifting the stray strands of blonde hair plastered to her forehead, slightly clammy from the fog. “Tell me about Max,” she said.
“Max.” Ralph Waldo steepled his fingers and thrust his long, knifelike nose into their midst. “Max is—was—a chip off the old block. Meaning his grandmother Sarah. He was a proud and lonely youngster, always wandering off into the moors by himself with a book and a sack of lunch, like as not gone for hours. I think, when I look back on it, that I was his only real friend; and that, probably, because I accepted the friendship on his terms.”
“I don’t understand,” Merry said.
Ralph Waldo turned and looked at her fondly, if somewhat speculatively. “No, I daresay you wouldn’t, dear heart,” he said. “No one is ever likely to make you conscious of your class.” He laughed shortly and clasped his arms around his knees. “Max knew he was several levels above me on the social scale. He chose me to be his tagalong, as a lord might enthrall a vassal. I was happy enough to be sword-bearer and general dogsbody to the highest liver on the island. Lord, we had fun. We raced around the island in his boat and swam naked in the surf; we buried pirate treasure in the Hidden Forest, made maps, and dug it up again; we ate cranberry tarts purloined from Mrs. Hodge’s window and gave the miller fits with loosening the windmill sails. For a couple of years I got through the island winters just by making plans for the summer when Max would be back. The play-acting lasted until we were suddenly too old for it.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning,” Ralph said, “until women and real money entered the picture.”
The tone in her grandfather’s voice made Merry angry, and she was uncertain why. She mentally thrust Max Mason away and said, “You got the girl, right?”
Ralph Waldo smiled. “More or less,” he said. “He went off to Princeton. I took to the road and hoofed it a bit, did some vaudeville, spouted Hamlet. It was a lark while it lasted. Then I came home, married your grandmother, Swedish beauty that she was, and took a dose of real living.” He glanced around him for his coffee cup, which Merry saw was empty. He raised it to his lips anyway for something to do.
“What’d Max do after Princeton?” Merry asked, relentless.
“Well, he didn’t marry for another twenty years, matter of fact. Guess he carried a torch for a while. Came into his fortune, which, carefully shepherded by his father, had made money hand over fist. He won a contract for military uniforms during Vietnam, took the company public after the war, and never looked back. And we never really spoke again. Oh, once in a while, if we passed on Main Street in one July or another, I’d raise a hat and he’d nod.” He paused. “I never asked your grandmother if she had any regrets.”
“You know she didn’t,” Merry said. “He sounds like a real prick.”
Her grandfather threw back his head and laughed out loud, a clear and joyous sound that came from his depths and washed away her annoyance. “Oh my, yes,” he said, “as his poor kids no doubt discovered.”
“Why didn’t you ever tell me any of this?” Merry asked him.
“I don’t like to talk about my failures. And, somehow, Masons never had much to do with our lives.”
“They do now,” Merry said. “One of them got himself killed last night.”
“Not young Peter?” Ralph Waldo turned to her with real concern.
“Don’t tell me you’re in love with him too,” she said. “And he’s not that young.”
“He’s all right, then?”
“If you consider being a suspect for murder all right. Will Starbuck—a local kid—found his brother drowned in the Mason Farms cranberry bog, and Peter isn’t talking.”
“Rusty dead. Well, well. And it couldn’t have been an accident?”
Merry shook her head. “Not that Mason cares. I’ve never seen such indifference in a next of kin.”
“His kind of people don’t show emotion to strangers.” Ralph Waldo’s voice held a note of reproof.
“He made it very clear that he hadn’t seen his brother in ten years, didn’t know why he’d turned up, and couldn’t care less that he’s dead; and he doesn’t even seem to realize that makes him look guilty as hell.”
“This begins to be interesting,” Ralph Waldo said. “Peter and Rusty were inseparable as boys. Peter was younger, of course, and trailed around after his brother with that pathetic adoration most teenagers exploit unmercifully—you did it to Billy, remember, and he had you washing his car every week until your mother found out—”
“—and lectured me about feminism for the first time in my life,” Merry interjected.
“I’d have thought Rusty’s murder would be a terrible blow. Sure he wasn’t in shock?”
“Shock my foot.”
“But he was surprised?”
“Yes, to be fair, I’d say Rusty’s body was the last thing he expected to run into this morning. My gut says he had no idea it was there.” Merry met her grandfather’s eyes. “But I can’t ignore the impression I got that he hated his brother. Do you think this falling-out’s for real?”
Ralph Waldo pursed his lips. “Meaning, he could be trying to put as much distance between himself and the corpse as a good story can buy him? I grant you, it’s possible, but not likely. I’ve watched Peter for years, and he’s never given cause for worry. Rusty, now . . .” He paused, stroking his jaw. “Rusty’s the last person I’d expect to end up dead. But then, I’ve been wrong about Rusty his whole life.”
“You know, Ralph,” Merry said, “it’s safest, as a general rule, to assume we’ll all end up dead.”
“Rusty would have argued that point, my dear. He understood power. Maybe he confused it with immortality, I don’t know. He certainly pursued it relentlessly. If you’d asked, I’d have said Rusty Mason would rule the world one day, whatever world he chose. I had him pegged as Max’s successor—Peter wasn’t enough of a shark.” He dusted his hands free of crumbs, his fingertips gleaming with bacon grease. “I figured Rusty would eventually enter politics—not electoral campaigns, you understand, but the sort of back-room influence that means real power. A cabinet member, maybe, or a presidential adviser. I never thought he’d die young. He must have lost his hold on Fate
.” The lines in Ralph Waldo’s skin settled more deeply into his face. He had watched over a number of untimely ends.
“What else were you wrong about, Ralph?”
“Well, he didn’t succeed Max, for one thing,” Ralph said. “I can’t tell you why. And he’s never been back to the island since the heart attack that killed his father. That’d be about nine, ten years ago now, which squares with Peter’s story.”
“The island’s Living Memory, Ralph Waldo Folger,” Merry intoned. “I didn’t even recognize the guy this morning.”
“You forget. I was police chief when those boys were kids.”
“What was Rusty like? Beyond being power-hungry, I mean?”
Ralph hesitated. “I could say one thing or the other, and they’d both be partly right and partly wrong,” he said finally. “He was a tricky customer. Very good at the poker face and the unemotional voice, and next to impossible to know. He was bright in the way that’s clever more than brainy, if you know what I mean—good at seeing people’s vulnerabilities and using them to get what he wanted.”
“Your basic privileged snake,” Merry said.
“That’s too easy, Meredith,” her grandfather said sharply. “It ignores his most useful skill—his charm. People would do anything for Rusty. That’s what made him dangerous.”
“Stop indulging your dramatic side, Ralph,” Merry said.
“I’m not, young woman. I’m telling you what I’ve seen. I ran into Rusty once or twice on what I thought was the wrong side of the law, and was never able to pin him down to it.”
“Like?”
“Well, there was one bad month twenty years ago when the Mason household petty cash disappeared and Martha Shambles, Bertha’s niece, was dismissed for it. I think Rusty took it.”
“But the Masons are made of money,” Merry broke in.
“Sometimes there are things you don’t want to ask for,” Ralph Waldo said. “Like fixing a girl’s trouble when you’ve caused it.”
“That happened? You knew that?”
“There’s knowing, and there’s proving,” Ralph Waldo said. “Let’s just say that when a sixteen-year-old summer kid started hemorrhaging one night, and had to be rushed to Mass Gen in a helicopter, some of us started to think about the Mason theft. Rusty had spent a lot of the summer with the girl, and the timing fit pretty well. But rumors never washed much with Max; he stood by his kids, I’ll give him that.” Ralph Waldo fell silent, as Merry turned over his words in her mind.
“And you say Peter never gave any trouble?”
“Classic case of a completely different personality admiring, in his older brother, all that he wasn’t. I can’t blame Rusty for his sneaky ways, all the same. I saw some of his problems—his love of money, and the way he had of manipulating people to get what he wanted—as Max’s fault. Max believed kids their age had too much money and too much freedom, so he kept them all on a short rein. Peter and the daughter could take it. Rusty fought it any way he could. I thought that was youth, something he’d grow out of.”
“Like you think Peter’s innocent now,” Merry said.
“Perhaps. At my age, I’m allowed to want tragedies to have happy endings.”
A deep-throated horn blared across the harbor, dominating the voices of other craft obscured by the fog. Somewhere beyond the curtain of damp, the Hyannis car ferry was rounding Brant Point. Merry shifted restlessly. Her backside was numb from sitting on the dock. “The thing is, Ralph, I’m of two minds, and I’ve got to pull them together if I’m going to move on this investigation.”
“Sounds like sense.”
“I can assume Rusty was the intended victim and try to find out who’d want to kill him, what possible motive he could have, and how he knew Rusty would be back on the island last night.”
“Or?”
“Or I can look for a killer who thought he got Peter Mason and killed Rusty instead. You can see there’s a certain sense of urgency in that.”
Ralph Waldo meditated an instant, then slapped his knees, hoisted himself to his feet, and extended his hand to Merry. “Can’t think of anyone who’d have any reason to kill young Peter,” he said. “There’s not a fellow with more integrity and sense on the island. No, Meredith Abiah, there is a tide in the affairs of men, which, when taken at the flood, can send entire families spinning off into separate eddies. Something snaps the line that binds them together. Maybe there’s a tug when it happens, maybe it’s so gentle the line just slips apart. But mark my words, it’s the severed ends of the rope you’re looking for.”
Merry stood up and mechanically dusted off the seat of her khakis with one hand. When had the tide taken Rafe da Silva? Somewhere in the deserts of Iraq, or later, in a holding pen in New Bedford? A sudden wave of dizziness washed over her, and she closed her eyes, stars bursting against her lids. When she opened them, Ralph Waldo was gazing at her sternly.
“I’m going down to the wharf to buy bluefish, young woman, and I expect you to turn right around and head for home. Forget your report for a few hours and get some sleep.” He pulled her close in a rough embrace. She yawned hugely against his shoulder.
“Can’t, Ralph. I’ve still got to deal with Dad.”
“I was wondering when you’d mention that,” he said carefully. “Let me know if you need reinforcements.”
Chapter 7
Mayling stern sat cross-legged in a red leather chair, looking out at the sea. She was susceptible to weather; today the gray of water and air had driven her up and down the studio in restless pacing or left her huddled wordlessly, mug in hand, before the enormous and woeful sky. The house sat high on the Siasconset bluff, its historic front facing into the island’s past and its contemporary back staring across the Atlantic. Mayling had furnished each half as befit its age, seventeenth-century and twenty-first, two faces of her divided soul.
She had awakened with a groggy head, the foghorns reverberating in her skull, and stumbled for the shower. She would get nothing done today. Desultory sketches that trailed off the paper, unfulfilled; much sighing and snapping of charcoal; the knowledge that her season’s creative burst was done. Time now for the shift to New York, smacking of life, of brilliant harlotry, of details too rapid to absorb.
She wore black, her best color, suited to the quality of light and the richness of the chair. In her lap were the discarded pages of a letter. She had profited from Sky’s early-morning urge for surf casting: waiting until he disappeared into the mist; lighting a burner for the cold, full, kettle; and then, tea in hand and the envelope flap carefully steamed, opening the letter with her nail file. She had read it three times and knew the words by heart.
At the sound of the light footsteps springing up the staircase from the ground floor, she shot to her feet, scattering the pages. A black head rounded the doorway, and she gave a small gasp.
“Peter!” She reached for the back of the chair.
Peter’s smile of greeting faded. “Mayling,” he said, crossing to her side. “What’s wrong?” The color had drained from her face. “Sorry I scared you. I knocked, but you probably can’t hear me up here.”
“Forget it,” Mayling said. “I’m fine. I startle easily when it’s foggy. Everything’s both muffled and louder than usual, if you know what I mean.”
“Let me help you with those,” Peter said, as she bent quickly to pick up the discarded letter.
“I told you I’m fine.” Her brown eyes were furious, and he flinched as though he’d been slapped. She scuffled the loose sheets into a pile, found the envelope beneath the chair, and left the room.
Peter sat down on an ottoman, stifling the impulse to follow her. Mayling was moody enough, but rarely without reason. He was convinced she had thought he was someone else. Who? Sky? And what could be so important about a letter?
He glanced around the studio, his eyes adjusting to the
dim light, wondering why she hadn’t bothered to turn on the bronze lamps that hovered, UFO-like, in the space of the vaulted ceiling. He stood up restlessly and wandered over to the drafting table, where a single black spotlight threw a pool of brightness onto the paper. He had lied when he told Meredith Folger no one on the island knew Rusty. But he was determined to talk to his oldest friends first before he subjected them to her questions. They deserved to hear of Rusty’s death from him. The detective could grill them in a few days. Maybe by that time he’d know who had killed his brother.
He glanced down at the drafting table. Mayling hadn’t done much. A heavy red cross was drawn through the only sketch on the page. He leaned closer to examine it, curious, and saw that it was the last thing he had expected: a wedding dress. He felt suddenly self-conscious, as though he’d gone through her drawers, and turned away from the table. She’d never done a bridal line before. There was no hint of one in the works when he surveyed the bolts of silk and wool from her winter collection, stacked in the studio’s corners. He reached out to finger a length of mohair the color of oxblood and smiled involuntarily. He was starting to speak Mayling’s vernacular. Her names for colors—Anthracite, Ming Blue, Pomegranate—had never come naturally to him.
She had recovered when she returned to the room, her eyes clear and her smile carefully sustained. He decided not to probe.
“I hope I haven’t missed Sky,” he said.
“No, but only just. This is a twenty-four-hour trip—he’s flying back tonight.”
“He may not be going anywhere if the fog holds.”
“That’d be nice, Peter. I’ll hope for it. It’s good to see you,” Mayling said. “Every summer I envision weeks of things we can do together, and then summer disappears.” She threw herself down on the chair and swung her legs over one side. “It’s gone for good now, and I’m ready to be back in New York. It happens that quickly. I may go home with Sky.”
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