Death in the Off-Season

by Francine Mathews

  “Rafe was one of the three men?” Peter asked.

  She shook her head. “No, but as luck would have it, he was in the same bar. And he got into a fistfight. Later, as many people swore he was with the three guys as didn’t.”

  “So what happened?”

  “The fishermen got tired of the beer and left, looking for some trou­ble. They found it about three blocks away.”

  Merry took a swig of cold tea. The slightly metallic flavor tasted like the stale nausea she’d felt in the courtroom every day of Rafe’s trial. She looked at Peter. His patrician face was expressionless. How could he know what it had been like?

  “There was this couple pulled up to a money machine. The street was pretty deserted—it was three in the morning. The guy was working his card while the woman sat in the car looking at her makeup in the visor mirror. It happened to be a BMW. At a bank. The three guys went nuts. The wife-beater had his gutting knife in his jeans pocket, and he held it to the guy’s throat while he withdrew the maximum allowable on his card. Then they forced him into the car, drove to an empty warehouse, and made him watch while they raped his girlfriend.” Merry paused and looked at her hands. “Then they slit both their throats. And went home to their wives to sleep it off.”

  Peter sat back in his chair. He remembered the incident dimly, but he rarely followed crime stories in the news; they had so little to do with his life. “And Rafe was charged with this?”

  “He stood trial.”

  “That’s unbelievable. Why? “

  Merry smiled faintly. “He’d dated the dead girl.”

  “Jesus.”

  “She was from a Portuguese family—it’s a pretty tight community in New Bed, you know, and they can close ranks around their own. First they accused a local homeless guy, but then the girl’s sister came forward and fingered Rafe. Said he’d killed her because she’d left him for a yuppie with money and a great car.”

  “The sister must have known it wasn’t true,” Peter said.

  Merry looked at him. “You know, when you hear stories like this it’s easy to say men are animals. They’re sick. But women are worse, sometimes. That girl had a crush on Rafe and he’d never once looked at her. So she brought him down. That’s my theory, anyway. Don’t try to understand it.”

  Frowning, Peter reached for his cognac.

  “Turns out Rafe didn’t have a very good alibi. He lived alone, and all he could say was that he’d left the bar and gone home to bed. People had seen him hit a guy that night. The prosecutor even used the fact that he was an Iraq vet to make it look like we were all lucky he hadn’t taken out a movie theater with an assault rifle. What saved him was forensics—his DNA didn’t match any of the sperm or hair samples found on the woman’s body. But for months, until the wife-beater was picked up for domestic assault and had his DNA routinely taken, half of New Bedford believed Rafe was guilty. He was thrown off his cousin’s boat, and when he came back to Nantucket, his dad cut him loose. He was probably pretty desperate around the time you gave him a job.”

  “How do you know all of this, Detective?” Peter asked.

  “New Bedford was my first posting after I got out of the police acad­emy. I wasn’t on Rafe’s case—too junior—but . . .” She hesitated. “I watched the whole thing, day after day. I’ve never been so terrified of mob justice in my whole life. I decided then that the difference between the wrong man going to jail and the right one was good detective work, and that’s what I wanted to do.”

  “But not in New Bedford.”

  “I followed Rafe back here.” She laughed brusquely. “Pretty pathetic, isn’t it? To fall in love with a guy because he’s wrongly accused of murder?”

  Peter took a sip of his drink. “There were probably other reasons.”

  “I thought I’d helped him stay strong during the darkest time in his life. But it turns out, I just remind him of it.” She set down her tea. “And if he knew I’d told you all this, he’d never forgive me. I’ll have you thinking he’s dangerous, next.”

  Peter poked at the driftwood with his fire tongs. A shower of sparks exploded into the chimney. “What a nightmare,” he muttered. “The powerlessness, the fear he must have felt. I’ve never really known him, have I?”

  “You know the man he’s become,” Merry said, “not the man he was. And maybe that’s a good thing. Rafe’s trying to build something new here at Mason Farms.”

  “Then I’ll let him do that. There’s no reason to talk about New Bedford. It never fails to trouble and amaze me how much sadness we culti­vate, and hide, and carry with us from the past. How do you sustain your belief in people, Detective, when you spend your days digging into our collective unhappiness?”

  “I was asking myself that this morning,” she said, “although not exactly in those words. Nantucket doesn’t witness a lot of violent crime. Drugs, of course, and burglaries. But what happened to your brother has really hit me—this being my first murder investigation.”

  Peter’s reserve dropped for one startled instant. “Mine, too. But I hope it will be my last. You don’t have that luxury.”

  “We all make our choices in life. This is mine.”

  “I’ve thought a lot about Rusty’s murder in the past few hours. I don’t know what your working hypothesis is—”

  “But you’ve formed one? Go on.”

  “My brother was a black sheep, Detective. He hasn’t been in touch with my family for years. As crazy as it was to find him in my bog this morning, I don’t think he was killed by mistake.”

  “You mean, murdered in your place?”

  “Exactly. I think Rusty pissed off some dangerous people in Brazil, ran for his life, and didn’t escape. I think you should consult the FBI or Interpol.”

  “I already have, Mr. Mason,” she said.

  “You have?”

  “When you mentioned he’d been living down there, it seemed the logical thing to do. If there’s anything in the response I think you should know about, I’ll fill you in. And by the way,” she added, “did you know the Department of Justice has a sealed indictment outstand­ing against your brother? He should have been picked up wherever he entered the US. Which says one of two things to me: he used a fake passport, or he entered illegally. We found no passport, fake or other­wise. Not that that means much. We didn’t even find a wallet.”

  “I wondered about that,” Peter said. “The killer must have taken everything Rusty had. So what’s next?”

  “Suppose we talk about your role in this investigation. How do you see it?”

  Peter sat very still. “I want to help in ways that only I can.”

  “What does that mean? As patron of the criminal arts?”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “Could you explain how you envision helping? Because if it means you’re going to wander around asking random people where they were last night, or that you’re planning to fly to Brazil and hunt up your brother’s old buddies, or that you’re going to drag the harbor in search of his luggage, I’m going to have to ask you to stay home and let us do our job.”

  Peter’s face darkened. He set down his cognac.

  “And now I should be going. Thanks for the tea.” Merry rose from her seat and glanced around for her red slicker.

  “I hung it in the closet,” he said. “I’m not going to get it until you listen to me.”

  “I think I could find it myself.”

  “Got a search warrant?”

  “Yes, as it happens. This is a crime scene.” Merry glared at him. Then she sat down. “Okay. Shoot.”

  “I happen to believe I’m uniquely qualified to help. Since this is your first murder investigation—I’m not questioning your ability, I’m only stating a fact,” he said, as she started to rise—“I suggest you take all the help that’s offered. I promise not to butt into your methods. I won’
t screw up your investigation. I merely intend to supple­ment it with my knowledge of Rusty’s personality, his contacts, and his history.”

  “The severed ends of the rope,” Merry said.

  “Excuse me?”

  “—that used to hold your family together. Somewhere it snapped, right? But you don’t trust me enough to tell me what happened. I understand that. We don’t know each other.”

  “It’s just that it’s personal,” Peter said.

  “Nothing’s personal where murder is concerned. I have to keep in mind, for instance, that as pleasant and plausible as you seem, Mr. Mason, you could have killed your brother yourself.”

  There was a tense silence.

  “I’ll get your coat,” he said.

  Sky stood up and opened the studio drapes Mayling had closed, and stared for a moment out over the Siasconset bluff. The sea was obliterated from view, and no stars were discernible above. Unlike Mayling, he found this comforting. Some nights, the knowledge of the sea lying just beyond his sleep, ceaselessly eating away at the shoreline, sent him tossing through the hours until dawn. The bluff had been Mayling’s choice. Left to himself, he’d have moved into town, or built something solid and comfortable on the moors outside of Madaket. A house on peaceful Madaket Harbor, perhaps, with a view of furled sails and faded wooden docks to ease the mind before bedtime. The sea off Siasconset was never calm in the dark. It stretched to the horizon, to Europe, over the bones of the Andrea Doria and other ships that had fallen to wrack in centuries of storms.

  Nights like this, with the sea obscured by fog, Sky knew what had set him apart from Rusty. Violence of feeling, violence of action, the night sea or the turbulence of the upper air tossing a small plane—he avoided these whenever possible. Rusty had thrived on them. And violence had ended his life.

  Sky leaned toward the broad window and rested his forehead against the glass. He closed his eyes. The image of the Mercedes’s man­gled front end hung in his brain. The fog, she had said. I hit a deer in the fog. “The police would have understood that, Mayling,” he’d told her. “Why didn’t you explain? Never, never leave the scene of an acci­dent again.”

  That was a conversation from this morning, before the news of Rusty lying in the bog, his legs bruised from the front end of a car. This morning, before Sky had a reason to doubt her. And why should he, after all? Mayling had never known Rusty. She had no motive for deliberately killing him. Sky jerked the drapes closed again and turned in the darkened room. Maybe it had been an accident. Mayling striking something in the fog, panicking, and leaving Rusty without even knowing what she’d hit . . .

  But no, an inner voice reminded him, Rusty died facedown in the water. His murder was no accident.

  Why would Mayling drive the unpaved roads near Mason Farms at night, anyway?

  Was it possible she’d meant to kill Peter?

  Madness.

  Sky moved toward their bedroom. He had to get Mayling away from here. God help him, he couldn’t face what it all might mean.

  “Forgive me, Rusty,” he whispered.

  When merry folger’s SUV had disappeared down the driveway, Peter turned off his desk lamp and put his head in his hands. It seemed a year since he had pulled open the body bag and seen Rusty’s face.

  He pressed his fingers to his eyes. In the darkness behind the closed lids the image of Alison’s face rose unbidden. One long winter before Rafe came to the farm, when his loneliness was stronger than his pain, he had written to her sister for news. Molly had told him everything and nothing: Alison lived here and there, doing this or that, neither happy nor unhappy; but she was alone, it seemed, and she never spoke of him. He had tried since then to shut every memory of her behind a door in his mind, and he did not want to open it now.

  But George was right: She ought to be told of Rusty’s death. Her knowledge of the last few weeks before he’d broken with the rest of the family might be valuable. But did it have to be Peter who called her?

  It would mean letting go of his anger and his stubborn pride. His deliberate isolation on a speck of land in the middle of the ocean.

  A foghorn blew plaintively across the distant water, and he hesi­tated, listening. Then he mounted the stairs to his room, the old house creaking around him in the darkness. He lay sleepless, well into the long night.

  Chapter 12

  “It’s not just the impact of the clothes, you know,” Mayling said, as she settled into the curve of the chintz sofa and crossed one slim golden leg over the other, “it’s me. I’m essentially alien to everything on this island. You should walk around Main Street with me sometime off-season and notice how people stare. Sometimes I think I’m the only Asian in town—barring the family that runs the Chinese restaurant. It turns them off my clothes—the island­ers, I mean. Too foreign, too New York. I have to content myself with catering to the summer trade.”

  “But you like it enough to come back every year,” Merry said.

  Mayling’s laugh held a note of self-mockery. “Well, it is one of the most beautiful places on earth, and I’ve never been one to deny myself beauty. And, too, I suppose I come for the peace. New York erupts in violence on a daily basis. On the island I can’t imagine that kind of ugliness.”

  “How do you explain what happened to Rusty Mason, then?”

  Distress clouded Mayling’s black eyes for the barest instant. “I can’t,” she said. “It’s utterly inexplicable. What do you make of it, De­tective? Or aren’t you telling?”

  Merry said nothing. Mayling drew on her cigarette and then re­leased the smoke in a long blue sigh, her gaze fixed on the distance over Merry’s left shoulder.

  “At a certain point every April I begin to crave the peace here, my drafting board overlooking the sea, the luxury of not having to see the same crowd of people at all the same shows—and then, around the end of August, I can’t be gone quick enough. Sky and I were planning to leave this afternoon, in fact. But Peter Mason asked us to stay for a few more days. Sky is his lawyer as well as his friend, you see.”

  And Mason apparently thought he needed legal help. “Could you tell me what you were doing the night Rusty Mason died, Ms. Stern?” Merry said.

  Mayling’s gaze snapped back to meet her own, but her face re­mained immobile. “I assume I was in bed,” she said.

  “Alone?”

  One of Mayling’s nostrils flared as a thin trail of cigarette smoke wafted upward from her right hand. “In any other circumstances I wouldn’t say. You police can be rather impertinent, can’t you?”

  Merry smiled faintly, but the warmth failed to reach her green eyes. “Be glad I’m a woman. These questions sound even worse when a man asks them. Were you alone?”

  “No. Sky arrived earlier in the evening.”

  “By ferry?”

  “Plane. From New York. A quick-turnaround trip, so he could say he’d had a Labor Day weekend. I picked him up at the airport at eight-thirty, or thereabouts. You can check his flight.”

  “And that evening the two of you—?”

  “Stayed in. Like the dull married couple we’re not.”

  Merry looked at Mayling over her reading glasses. The designer’s voice had an ironic edge Merry knew she was not supposed to miss. She decided to ignore it for the moment.

  “How long have you known Peter Mason, Ms. Stern?”

  “As long as I’ve known Sky.” She paused, and did some mental arithmetic. “That’d be eight years this past August. I met Peter my first summer on the island. He and Sky spent more time together then.”

  Merry lifted one black brow inquiringly, her fingers poised above her laptop. Mayling shifted on the sofa and uncrossed her legs.

  “This was about two years after Rusty had broken with the family, of course, and Peter was just starting to pull his life back together. He’d come into some money when Max died, and he’d bough
t the land out on the moors. The bog was dredged and the runners set, but he wasn’t living in the farmhouse. It was pretty much an unrenovated shell. He was camping in one wing of the old place on the Cliff Road, and we were renting in town, on Centre Street, so we just saw more of each other.”

  “You’re one of the few people on this island who actually knew Peter Mason had a brother,” Merry said. “Did he talk about him much?”

  Mayling studied her for an instant, then looked down at her finger­nails. “The first time he spoke of Rusty in my presence,” she said, “was to tell me that he was dead.”

  “Does that strike you as odd?”

  “No,” Mayling said, and she smiled, half amused, half saddened. “It’s completely typical. You don’t know Peter Mason, Detective, so I’ll try to be very fair to him.

  “Peter is capable of great love, and thwarted in that, I think he has turned his energies inward. He can be very focused, very driven. That made him a summa cum laude graduate of Princeton once; it makes him a dedicated farmer and a good athlete now. But sometimes it gets in the way of his living. As much as he thrives on being alone, he seems to envy other people’s togetherness. And envy makes him sound bitter, sometimes.” She stubbed out her cigarette. “Yet, at base, he’s one of the dearest people on earth. He possesses integrity—which is a van­ishing quality, in my life, at least. I’d trust him with a great deal.”

  She paused.

  “But I’d never trust him in the same room with his brother.”

  Merry stopped writing and looked up from her pad. A curious end to a glowing testimonial. “Is he capable of killing a man?”

  Mayling glanced over one shoulder at the sea, a bright blue line capping the edge of the sunlit bluff behind the house. All of the designer’s movements were abrupt, Merry reflected, in contrast to her carefully chosen words.

  “I don’t know,” Mayling said. “I think both Sky and I have been wondering. But neither of us has been willing to say it. He had the opportunity, surely, and probably the means. God knows he had the cause. I just can’t decide if he had the will—not to commit the act, but to sustain the deception.”