Death in the Off-Season

by Francine Mathews

  “You mean he’d crack under pressure?”

  “I mean he’s too honest. The way he’s acted since the murder would be utterly uncharacteristic if he’d committed it himself. He’d be much more likely to kill Rusty in a fit of rage and then report himself to the police.”

  Merry’s glasses were dangling speculatively from one corner of her mouth as she listened. “Rage. Why did Peter hate his brother?”

  “He hasn’t told you?” Mayling said, startled.

  “I haven’t asked.”

  “Because of a woman, of course.”

  “Before Rusty went to Brazil?”

  “Six months before. Peter and the girl—Alison Miller—had just graduated from Princeton. They’d been dating since freshman year, and Peter asked her to marry him at a big Fourth of July party the Ma­sons threw at the Cliff Road house. Sky was invited; he’s the one who told me all this.”

  Merry had graduated ten years ago, too, from Cape Cod Community College. She realized, with a start, that she was the probably the same age as Peter Mason. A slight chill ran up her back. All these unknown lives, progressing for years in parallel to her own, intersecting suddenly with a death in the dark and fog. She had passed the Masons a thousand times on the is­land’s streets in the past three decades and never known whether they were islanders or summer people. Or cared.

  She usually spent Fourth of July on a blanket in the back of a truck, a beer in her hand, watching the fireworks off Jetties Beach. Up above her on the Cliff Road, the Masons would have watched the same thing from the terrace of their perfectly mown back yard, hidden behind ten-foot boxwood hedges, the women in brightly flowered sundresses with enamel bracelets on their tanned arms. The men would be in open-collared pastel madras shirts and vivid blazers, and their white teeth would flash in the glow of the colored sparks falling from the sky. They would drink Tanqueray and tonic. The night breeze off the sound would ruffle hair still wet from a last shower before dinner. Perhaps there had been a tent, a striped and poled affair with potted hydrangeas ranged around the tables.

  Maybe, as she’d tipped back a longneck that night for another swig of beer, she’d even heard the distant strains of music, a phrase from a life that had nothing to do with hers. She had been twenty-two, and this summer she’d had her thirty-second birthday. She had worked straight through this past July Fourth.

  “That was when Peter’s mother still spent every summer here, and the kids all came home for three months, except Rusty, who was work­ing in New York.” Mayling was studying her as she spoke, conscious Merry had only half heard her. “They’d fly up on weekends.”

  “Pretty tight-knit family.”

  “Or maybe wealth just has its routines, like everything else.”

  “What happened at the party?”

  “Rusty met Alison. And then he came back to Nantucket for two weeks in August. He told Sky he needed a vacation, but it’s clear, looking back, that it was Alison he was after.”

  “She was living at the house?”

  “Yes.”

  “What was she like?”

  “From what Sky remembers, pretty unexpected,” Mayling said. “Anything but the New York debutante who’d hooked a good Estab­lishment boy. She was solidly middle-class. Probably a lot like me,” she added, to Merry’s surprise.

  “I think we might define ‘middle-class’ differently, Ms. Stern,” she said. “Could you explain what you mean?”

  Mayling looked slightly nettled. “I grew up in the garment district of New York, Detective. I went to public schools. My father was a wholesaler, a Jew raised in Queens, and my mother was a Chinese im­migrant who worked as a seamstress in his back room. They killed themselves just to get by. That’s what I mean by middle-class. Alison went to Princeton for the degree, not for the deb balls. She came up to the island and got a job waitressing while she figured out what she wanted to do next—apply to grad school, or work for a few years first.”

  “Thank you,” Merry said. “That helps. And Peter?”

  “He was pretty aimless that summer, too,” Sky said. “Good at know­ing what he didn’t want to do—work in the family business—but un­able to hit on an alternative. He took a job as a lifeguard at Jetties Beach and spent his off hours browsing job websites.”

  Merry searched her memory for a youthful Peter Mason lifesaving on Jetties Beach, and gave up. She found it hard to picture him young. He seemed incapable of its essential silliness.

  “So the farm wasn’t even a thought at that point?”

  “No. I think he was toying with law school. Sky’s influence, proba­bly—he was approaching his third year at Harvard.” Mayling broke off and rubbed her temples.

  “You okay?” Merry asked.

  “Fine,” she said. “I’ve just had these splitting headaches lately. Allergies, probably. Or gluten. Anyway, over the winter, Peter had a lot of time to think about his future.”

  “Alison left him?”

  “By Labor Day. To do her justice, she probably never stood a chance. The way Sky tells it, Rusty was a competitive bastard. He mea­sured himself against every guy he came in contact with. Even his brother. Rusty set out to seduce Alison, and so of course he was successful.”

  “Was it just a game to him?”

  “Hard to say. It might have lasted, who knows? She lived in his Manhattan apartment until he left for Brazil later that year. But she didn’t go with him.”

  “Why did Rusty leave, Ms. Stern?”

  Mayling avoided her eyes and bent toward the coffee table for her pack of Dunhills. She shook one into her palm with delicate fingers and held it to her mouth. Apparently tobacco was not one of her allergies.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “I don’t think Sky does, either. He told me the Masons never talk about Rusty or Alison.”

  Merry typed Alison Miller in her laptop notes. “So Peter’s been nursing a grudge over a college romance for ten years?”

  “He never let Alison go,” Mayling said. “That’s not particularly healthy, but I don’t believe he has any control over it. Peter apparently adored Rusty—and Rusty betrayed him without a second thought. Peter couldn’t forgive him. Masons are excellent haters.”

  “And now the object of his hatred is dead,” Merry observed.

  Mayling nodded. “If any good is likely to come of Rusty’s murder, it’s that Peter may finally move on.”

  Would he kill for that kind of closure? Merry wondered. “You said Sky met Alison. What did he think of her?”

  Mayling considered her answer. “She was fairly young, but then, they all were. Sky said she was intelligent, highly verbal.”

  “Meaning?”

  “An effortless vocabulary, the sort of wit that takes the form of puns and double entendres. Sky seemed to consider her good at draw­ing people out. He said the Masons—Julia, George, Max—were en­tirely charmed by her. And Max had been against Peter’s engagement; he thought he was too young. As perhaps he was.” She stopped abruptly, and thought further. “Sky said Alison and Peter just seemed to fit. He couldn’t explain what he meant. But I understood. I have felt it myself, about Sky, that he’s an extension of me. They were probably two people who completed each other.”

  “And yet she left him after two weeks of Rusty?”

  “If Peter found Rusty irresistible, why wouldn’t Alison?”

  “Has Peter Mason had any relationships since?”

  “You mean, has he been emotionally involved? I don’t know, really. I can’t say I’d be the first person he’d tell. He spends a lot of time with a schoolteacher here on the island, Lucy Jacoby. But there never seems to be much between them. It’s too bad, really. Peter has so much to offer. He just doesn’t seem capable of feel­ing, anymore.”

  Merry closed her laptop. “Thank you, Ms. Stern. You’ve been very helpful.”

  “Not a
t all.”

  Merry assessed her for an instant, liking her more as she left than she had when she arrived. “I must say, as an islander, that I love your clothes,” she said. “I just can’t afford them. The other day I was glued to your window by some incredible sweaters you’ve got there.”

  “The Chinese New Year sweaters,” Mayling said. “I’m glad you like them.” When Merry looked puzzled, she added, “It’s the animal buttons. The Chinese lunar calendar—the zodiac, if you will—runs according to a twelve-year cycle, each year represented by an ani­mal.”

  Comprehension flooded Merry’s mind. “The Year of the Dragon,” she said.

  “For instance. Yes. Or the Horse. Or the Rat, to take a less exalted example.”

  Her expression must have changed. Mayling laughed.

  “It’s not that bad, really,” she said. “You aren’t meant to look like the animal of your year.”

  “I didn’t happen to notice whether you had a rat sweater in the window,” Merry said. “Did you make many of them?”

  “Oh, I could find you one, don’t worry. They’ve met with varying degrees of success. So few people know the sign of their birth year; they scooped up the ones with the rabbits and dragons, and left those with the rats and pigs. Unfortunate. I’ll have to give them away.”

  “Do you happen to know if anyone on the island bought one?”

  “A sweater? Of course. Scads. Although they sell better in New York. Everything does.” Mayling stubbed out her cigarette and gave Merry a long look. “What’s going on? Was Rusty wearing one?”

  Merry reached into her pocket and withdrew the plastic evidence bag that held the button she’d lifted from the grass by Peter Mason’s driveway. “No, but his murderer was,” she said. “There were some prints on it. We haven’t identified them.”

  Mayling reached for the bag and turned it over in her palm. “It’s from a rat sweater, all right,” she said. “I should know; I wear one my­self.”

  “Could I see it?” Merry asked, her voice carefully neutral.

  Mayling looked at her swiftly. There was a moment’s pause. “Of course,” she said, and rose to go upstairs.

  She returned in a matter of seconds with a cardigan made of heathered alpaca in the shifting colors of the sea, and handed it wordlessly to Merry. A solid row of rats marched up the left edge.

  “Looks like the real thing,” Merry said. “Does any other manufac­turer use this type of button?”

  Mayling shook her head. “They’re handmade for me.”

  The sweater formed a soft weight in Merry’s lap, like a sleeping cat. She shook it out and held it above her head, noticing the creases re­mained, as though it had been folded some time. A faint odor of plastic clung to the wool. Either this sweater had been stored, or it was fresh from the manufacturer’s carton. She doubted it had come from Mayling’s drawer. “It’s terrific,” she said. “When did it come into the store?”

  “About mid-July. The color would be wonderful with your hair, you know.”

  “Is there any way you could trace the sale of specific sweaters?”

  “I could try, I suppose,” Mayling said slowly. “But I’ll be honest. It’s highly improbable that either the New York or the island store noted the type of sweater sold in most cases, if they did at all. And with the number of New Yorkers who come to Nantucket, the button lost at Peter’s could have been owned by almost anyone.” She folded her arms under her breasts protectively, as though feeling a chill. “Detective—this probably is irrelevant, but—”

  “But what?”

  “I sold one to Peter, you know, rather early on.”

  “To Peter? For himself?”

  She shook her head. “It was a birthday gift. To Lucy Jacoby.”

  When Mayling Stern had shut the door of the house on the bluff, Merry walked to the Explorer without looking back. She imagined the designer standing just to one side of a window, too intelligent to pull back a blind and betray her watchful gaze, but following her progress down the hydrangea-lined path just the same. Merry glanced at the passenger side of the car and saw with relief that Seitz was inside, his head rocking to inaudible music. She yanked open the driver’s side door and jumped in. Seitz’s head hit the Explorer’s roof with a little jolt of surprise.

  “Find anything in the garage?” she said, as she started the car.

  “Just a mangled front end,” he said. “Got some great pictures. Some soil and paint samples, too.”

  Chapter 13

  The boys—perhaps twenty of them—faced off in two lines on the muddy field of Vito Capizzo stadium and tackled each other on the coach’s command. Their bodies, some gawky, some newly powerful, collided in a shuddering of bone and curses that was audible across the field where Will Starbuck stood. He had been poised on the slight rise between the high school parking lot and the football field for an hour, an oversized T-shirt rucked up around the hands he’d shoved in the pockets of his jeans, waiting for something. He did not know exactly what.

  The coach blew piercingly on his whistle, and the grappling bod­ies fell apart. “Okay, okay, work it out, work it out,” he shouted. The crowd of muddied uniforms, with their bulging pads incongruously large for the breadth of the players’ bodies, turned toward the far goalpost in unison and began to lap the field. One boy cast a glance over his shoulder and, it seemed to Will, saw him for an instant. Then he turned back and trotted on. Sandy Stewart, who had been his best friend. Will stood still, the familiar shame and nausea burn­ing in his gut.

  The coach was walking toward him, whistling under his breath. He was fit and powerful, a graduate of Nantucket High who’d once played for the NFL. He’d known the glory years of Whaler football under Capizzo, when the team had been a powerhouse in the Mayflower League and the annual game between Nantucket and Martha’s Vineyard was the stuff of legend. In recent years, worry about head injuries and the increasing popularity of lacrosse and soccer had eroded some of the local support for football. Fewer people showed up for the Saturday afternoon games. The team was technically coed, although it was rare for a girl to play. The coach made the most of the few kids he had.

  He grunted as he took the slight rise toward the school, throw­ing his back into it. He seemed unaware of Will standing motionless above him.

  “Hey, Coach,” Will said.

  He glanced up as he crested the rise, and nodded coolly. “Hello, Starbuck.”

  “Listen, Coach—” Will began, somewhat desperately.

  “You want to play football, right, Starbuck?”

  Will nodded.

  “Then where were you all summer? You know I run an offseason training program. Every other kid out there managed to show up.”

  He met the coach’s eyes, unable to explain. How he’d played football for years with his dad and couldn’t bear to touch the ball for months after he’d found the rotting corpse on the beach. How he’d lost too much time to grief and medication, counseling and his mother’s watchful eyes, until all he wanted was to be normal again. Normal and far below the radar, like every other fifteen-year-old kid.

  “Look, I’ve got to see some commitment before I can make a place for you on the team,” the coach said. “There’s no freeloaders on the Whalers, you understand? You don’t win games with a short attention span.”

  “I know,” Will said. “I’d commit. Football’s important to me.”

  The coach assessed his lanky frame. “You played Boys and Girls Club at Cyrus Pierce, right? What’s your position?”

  “Receiver.”

  “Sprint time?”

  “Five-point-three, but I was shorter last year.” Will flinched as a horn blared at his elbow. He turned and saw a Nantucket police Explorer pulling up behind him. Meredith Folger rolled down the window, leaned out, and waved.

  “You in trouble?” the coach asked.

  W
ill shook his head. “She’s . . . sort of a friend.”

  “Better get going then. And Starbuck—”

  “Yes, Coach?”

  “Come by tomorrow. We’ll see what you can do.”

  He waited until the coach left before he approached Meredith Folger. She turned off the ignition and opened the car door.

  “Hey. How was the first day?” she said.

  He thought of the frozen faces of his home room, the guys who’d looked past him. Thought of the word “whackjob” that had been scrawled on his locker door in pink highlighter, faint but unmistakable, the period before lunch. Thought of how he’d eaten alone, nearly choking on the peanut butter and jelly Tess had packed for him, while a table of girls tittered and giggled across the aisle, pretending they weren’t talking about him when he met their eyes. Thought of Sandy Stewart slouched in front of his buddies, stone-faced and remote, say­ing, “Yo, Starbuck. You’re back,” and then walking past him to sit somewhere else. He was a pariah. A refugee from the funny farm. A kid with a padded cell.

  “Couldn’t be better,” he said to Merry Folger. “It’s gonna be a great year.”

  She smiled brightly and then looked past him to the football team, now finished its laps and laboring wearily up the rise to the parking lot. The guys surveyed the squad car and Will standing uneasily next to it, and nudged one another. Sandy Stewart met Merry’s eyes and nodded once, curtly, then looked away. The entire group fell silent as they passed her, until one kid in the back started humming the “do-do-do-do, do-do-do-do” of The Twilight Zone theme and the rest of them burst out in snickers. She turned back to Will, her smile gone and a slight furrow between her green eyes. “Not a group with triple-digit IQs, huh?”

  “They’re okay,” he said defensively. “What do you want?”

  “Nothing much,” Merry said. “I just came over because I saw you. I’m looking for Lucy Jacoby.”