Death in the Off-Season

by Francine Mathews

  Loneliness is a kind of death. I gotta call Del.

  “Jackie!” he yelled over the din of the gantry winch, which was pay­ing out the net and the pair of half-ton steel doors that dragged it to the bottom. “Jackie!”

  The mate turned to him impatiently, bullet head thrust forward in resentment. He had been a captain himself until last year, and taking orders from Joe was something he fought every day.

  “Get the net outta the water, now!”

  “What the hell are you talking about, old man?”

  “I won’t have a couple thousand dollars’ worth of new net torn apart in a gale, you understand? Get it up!”

  Jackie stood stock-still, his jaw working f iercely, his overdeveloped upper body emphasizing all that was squat and Cro-Magnon about him; then he turned and drove a hand flat against the pilothouse wall with a shuddering violence.

  “Christ Almighty,” he said. “When are you gonna go home and die, old man? Tell me that! There’s ten tons of cod down there, more than we’ve seen in months, more than anybody’s seen at one time in more trips out than we can count. We’re making money here, and you talk about a net!”

  The bastard. I’d never have spoken to my captain like that. No respect, these days. No gratitude. I’d better call Felix Harper, too.

  On the one hand, everything Jackie said was true. For years, cod on the bank had steadily dwindled. During the day, they hung around in the mid-depths where only the huge factory ships could reach them; but at night, they dropped back to the bottom, and the Lisboa Girl dropped her nets after them through all the hours of darkness. Joe was turning his back on money. But he could sense the weather’s gathering menace, and no amount of f ish was worth the safety of his boat and men. Jackie was young. He would learn from the weather, from the ones who didn’t come home, from the sudden silences on the radio frequencies in the midst of an unexpected gale.

  “First Mate Alcantrara,” the captain shouted into the wind, “for the last time, bring in the net, or I will do it for you.” He ducked back into the pilothouse and counted to f ive. Then he looked through the porthole for Jackie. The mate had gone over to the crewmen and was shouting and gesturing; but still the net was being paid out. Bullheaded young cuss. A huge wave broke over the bow as the Lisboa Girl dove into a trough, spraying the men standing midships by the gantry.

  Joe abandoned the pilothouse and reeled his way across the heaving deck, his hair instantly wet from the blown seas, his face turning red with suppressed rage.

  “Tell me what I have to do to get an order obeyed here,” he said to Jackie. The mate shrugged and looked away, muttering into the storm. Joe turned to a younger man working the winch. “Get that net back on deck, Lars, double-time, you understand?”

  “Sure, Cap’n, if you say so.” The blond crewman glanced at the f irst mate. “But there’s an awful lot of f ish down there.”

  “There’s a lot of bones, too,” Joe said through his teeth, “and not all of them ancient. Bring it up.”

  Lars, a Norwegian incorrectly known around Nantucket as the Swede, turned back to the controls and eased the lever through neutral into reverse. The winch gave a groan audible even over the force of the wind, and the net started to wind wetly out of the water.

  “That’s it,” Jackie burst out beside him. “I’m through. There’s nothing worse than a man who’s too afraid to make money. Why don’t you stay home and leave the cod to people who know what they’re doing?”

  Joe Duarte’s rage hiccupped inside of him as he shot a look at Jackie’s ugly face, but it was quickly replaced by a terrible weariness. He was old, too old to be walking a sea-slick deck in the pitching dead of night, too old to slam an obnoxious twenty-eight-year-old on the jaw, too old to weigh whether the catch or his life was more important.

  “You think you know what you’re doing, huh?” he said. “You think you know how to run a boat?”

  “Damn sight better’n you do, old man,” Jackie retorted.

  “At least I’ve got a boat to skipper,” Joe said, with satisfaction, “in­stead of a wreck at the bottom of Cape Cod Bay. You didn’t learn from that bit of trouble, did you, Jackie boy? You never learn anything. Your skull’s too hard and your brain’s too small. You can get off my boat, and good riddance.”

  He had expected the f irst mate’s scowl of rage and the words bub­bling at his lips, had expected him to take a swing at him, even, sealing the fate of their sundering after a year of strained partnership. But he hadn’t expected the look of horror that washed over the man as he stared at something behind Joe himself, over his head, or the cry of warning that was torn from him too late.

  Oh no. God, no. Del.

  The full force of the net’s steel otter door, rising much too fast from the roiling sea, caught the captain in the back of the skull. It was a massive blow that knocked sense from him with the swiftness of a snuffed candle. He crumpled at his crewmen’s feet, at the base of the gantry, the otter door swinging wildly overhead as the Swede struggled to secure it. Jackie reached for Joe Duarte just as the boat heeled over, wallowing in a trough and pitched sideways by the weight of the swinging door. But the stunned man slid out of the mate’s reach, into the water, his white head another bit of froth on the surging waves.

  “Joe!” Jackie cried, the howling of the wind drowning his voice. “Joe!”

  But the old man was gone.

  Chapter 1

  “It comes as no surprise to any of us, dear friends,” Father Acevedo was saying, “that Joe Duarte stayed in the water rather than attend his own funeral. He used to say that if the Lord wanted him at Mass instead of on the Georges Bank on Sunday, He’d have sent the f ish to church.” He paused for the anticipated laughter. “I think we know where the f ish are today, dear friends, and we know that Joe Duarte is right where he’d want to be.”

  The sentiment, however apt, failed to strike a note of cheer in the crowd. It missed, somehow, like the funeral conducted without a body, like the blowing gusts of frenzied rain that hammered the f irst summer flowers into their muddy beds. Father Acevedo meant well. He was Por­tuguese himself, born and raised on the Cape, and his father had f ished with the Provincetown fleet. He’d known Joe Duarte for six years. But when a man was lost at sea, fear cut deep in the hearts of his confed­erates, a fear hard to laugh off. No one who f ished for a living wanted to die for it.

  Detective Meredith Folger scanned the faces lining the pews and aisles of St. Mary’s. A few shocked smiles met the priest’s sally, but most of the mourners simply looked uncomfortable. She caught the eye of Jackie Alcantrara—Joe Duarte’s f irst mate, the one who’d jumped into the Atlantic after him and come back empty-handed. He’d taken a knock on the head, and the hospital had shaved his skull; the man looked more like a bull than ever, she thought. His heavy-featured face had gone white under his tanned skin, and he wasn’t laughing. Merry dropped her eyes to her lap and wished the funeral Mass were done.

  Joe’s relatives had come from all over Massachusetts—the Ed Duartes from Gloucester, the Luis Duartes from Mattapoisett, and up front, be­hind the f irst pew, the Manny Duartes out of New Bedford, the ones his daughter, Del, had been living with. They were all f ishermen. A good number of townsfolk had also braved the rain to say goodbye to Cap’n Joe, though few among them still made their living from the sea. There were Portuguese names all over the island, but they tended to be printed on the sides of pickup trucks rather than boats. Not a family among them failed to f ish every summer, however—for pleasure or sport, or the occasional killing in the Japanese tuna auctions.

  Father Acevedo beamed all around and raised his hands, signaling the end of his homily, and the congregation rose for the Prayer of the Faithful. Merry craned for a look at Adelia Duarte as she stood in the f irst pew, her two-year-old, Sara, singing a quiet nonsense song to her doll, and marveled again at her calm dignity. She had been absent from
the island almost three years, since the pregnancy that had alienated her father. To return under circumstances like these must be an unbearable strain. Yet she showed no signs of the gnawing guilt and regret that her neighbors probably hoped to see—none of the remorse of the prodigal daughter, eyes downcast and shoulders trembling, all hope of reconciliation lost. She had yet to endure the post-funeral reception, when the wives of her father’s friends would invade the house with their casseroles and sympathy, sincere or false, a suffocating flock of femininity blessed with men safe and alive.

  Merry smiled, and just as swiftly smoothed her features back into anonymous solemnity. Everyone in the church was trying not to stare at Adelia and her baby, and failing miserably. She was too much her father’s child to care what Nantucketers said or thought about her life; she was probably looking forward to the struggle.

  She had, after all, chosen to wear red today.

  “A pretty enough little thing,” Jenny Baldwin was saying, her eye on Sara Duarte, who was wandering wide-eyed through the forest of adult legs f illing Joe Duarte’s living room, “though rather small. But then she is illegitimate, and I always f ind that babies born out of wedlock are not robust, don’t you? And where did she get that red hair?” she continued, not waiting for Merry’s response. “Not from the Duartes, certainly.”

  “Agnes’s hair was auburn,” Merry said, recalling Adelia’s mother.

  “Was it?” Jenny said vaguely. “She died before my time, I’m afraid. Too bad. If she’d lived, perhaps Adelia wouldn’t have been quite so—unrestrained. But a girl raised as she was . . .” She clicked her tongue in mock sympathy and raised one eyebrow in the general direction of the red dress. She was the sort of woman who’d learned to click her tongue before she’d learned to form sentences. “Of course, Tom and I were always ready to do anything we could for her—”

  “If you’ll excuse me, Mrs. Baldwin,” Merry said, her own black brows lowering, “I’d like to talk to Del, and I haven’t much time before I’m due back at the station. You understand.”

  “You were great friends once, weren’t you?” Jenny Baldwin said, her bleached blue eyes awash with interest.

  She’s wondering if I know who the baby’s father is, Merry thought with distaste. “Yes,” she said, “but we’ve grown far closer since she left the island. Absence has a way of revealing your true friends.”

  She set down her club soda and crossed the room in search of the red dress, which seemed to have vanished into the kitchen. She had been less than frank with Jenny Baldwin, but anger brought out her contrary streak. Del Duarte was a childhood friend. They had grown apart during the past decade, some of which Merry had spent at Cape Cod Com­munity College, the Massachusetts Police Academy, and her f irst tour in New Bedford. By the time she’d come back to Nantucket six years ago, Del had her own life. Her pregnancy took her off-island three years later. Merry had no idea who’d fathered baby Sara.

  A wall of bodies obscured her view. She eased her shoulder past stocky, weathered Tom Baldwin, Jenny’s husband, raising her hand to the small of his back and hoping he’d ignore her. Instead, he turned his head and smiled.

  “Merry!” he said. “Good to see you.”

  “And you, Tom. Where’ve you been hiding?”

  “Oh, inside a foundation or two,” he said, his tanned skin crinkling at the corners of his eyes. He’d made more money than most during the recent development boom, and from the look of the signs around town announcing his current projects, he’d plowed the prof its back into his business. Merry doubted he’d been inside a concrete cellar for years.

  “I hope no one commits a crime today,” he said, glancing over at her father, the police chief, who stood surrounded by a knot of Joe Duarte’s older friends. From the way he held his hands in the air, spaced about eighteen inches apart, Merry knew John Folger was regaling them with the tale of his latest near-conquest of an elusive bluef ish. “With Nantucket’s f inest trapped in this room, they’d get clean away with it.”

  “We left Ralph Waldo by the phone.”

  “How’s your granddad doing?”

  “Very well, thanks. He never seems to get any older.” At eighty-two, Ralph Waldo Folger was competent and eager enough to resume his duties as police chief—relinquished to his son some twenty years be­fore—so that Merry and John could attend Joe Duarte’s funeral. She knew he’d be safely tucked up in his favorite armchair, one eye on the storm and one ear on the police radio.

  “Sad about Joe,” Tom said, twirling the ice cubes in his drink, “but at least he lived a long life.”

  “Right,” Merry said shortly. Tom Baldwin would consider sixty-eight young once he reached it.

  “I don’t suppose Adelia will be staying on the island long,” he con­tinued. “The house should sell quickly, this time of year—”

  “—and on this block of Milk Street,” Merry f inished. “I know. Every­one says the same thing. Perfect summer cottage for a young investment banker from New York. But I haven’t had a chance to talk to her long enough to f ind out whether she’s planning to sell or not.” She caught sight of Del through the space left by a turning head, and with a smile for Tom Baldwin, wove her way toward the kitchen.

  It was like Joe Duarte’s daughter to be calmly scrambling an egg in the middle of chaos. She stood by the stove, her long dark hair a shining band against the brightness of her dress, the only cheerful thing in an otherwise drab bachelor kitchen. It was a galley space, narrow and dark, with an ell for a small Formica-and-steel table with three outmoded chairs. The stubby refrigerator was rounded and domed in the mode of the 1940s, the counters were badly fauxed marble, and the linoleum on the floor was bleached of its original color—yellow, probably. A frieze of brown age spots overlaid the wallpaper like the back of an octoge­narian’s hand; Joe had apparently intended to strip it from the walls, since one section was torn off and hung to the floor with the pathetic droop of a three-day-old lily. The young investment banker from New York would have to sink some money into the place. Merry touched Del lightly on the shoulder, and Del turned to her with an expression partly of relief and partly of weariness.

  “Eh, f ilha,” she said, “Good of you to come. It’s been too long.”

  Hey, girl. The affectionate Portuguese phrase stripped away the years as suddenly as a breath of wind. Merry reached out to hug Adelia. “You look great,” she said. “I can’t tell you how sorry I am about Joe.”

  Del looked beyond her to the crowded living room. “Can you believe this circus?”

  “It’s like a bad joke—‘How many people can you f it into a Nantucket cottage?’”

  “Depends how many have eaten today, right?” Del said, laughing. “Joe’d have thrown them all out an hour ago.”

  “Or left them the house and camped on the boat.”

  “But that’s what it means to be dead,” she said, glancing up at the ceiling. “He’s a captive audience somewhere, for the f irst time in sixty-eight years.” Her eyes shifted quickly to the egg drying in the pan. “Whoops. She likes them soft, salmonella or no. Sara!”

  She reached for a plate and scraped the egg onto it. Tom Baldwin shouldered his broad chest through the kitchen door, Sara Duarte giggling on one arm. “Here she is!” he said, swooping her into a chair f itted haphazardly with a booster-seat cushion. He turned to Adelia, one hand reaching for the plate. The Baldwins had no children, Merry remembered, but it must not be from choice, Tom clearly enjoyed them. He smoothed Sara’s deep red curls, the color of mahogany, and settled himself into a chair, fork at the ready. Merry leaned against the wall and smiled at Del. She didn’t smile back.

  “I’ll feed her, if you don’t mind, Tom.” Adelia took the fork out of his hand and stood over his chair, her lips compressed.

  “Sure,” he said, rising quickly. “Just thought you could use a hand.”

  “I’m never too busy to f
eed Sara,” she said, and sat down. Tom looked at Merry, shrugged, and backed out of the kitchen.

  “Feeling a little tense?” Merry said, drawing up the remaining chair as Adelia lifted a forkful of egg toward Sara’s obliging mouth. “Or did Tom hit a nerve?”

  “Tom’s just being Tom,” she said wearily. “Hale and hearty and bend­ing over backward to show everybody that Sara would love to have a daddy. That poor Del has her hands too full, trying to raise her kid alone. Why didn’t she put her up for adoption, like everyone told her to? So couples like the Baldwins, poor guys, could have a baby of their own? But no. Adelia was always so stubborn, so bullheaded. Never knew what was good for her, and never would listen when people tried to tell her. Que pena.”

  “You don’t really believe they think that, Del,” Merry said.

  “Oh, I know they do.” Adelia put down the fork in frustration. “And I’ve got a headache that will not quit.”

  Sara kicked her feet against the tabletop, wanting another forkful of egg, then gave up and reached for it with her f ingers.

  “Okay, so maybe I’m a little raw,” Del said, sitting back in the chair. “But you don’t know, Mer, how hard it is to come back. To look like I don’t give a damn. I can’t even cry for Pop in peace. I can’t lose it in public. Everybody’d nod and say I feel as guilty as sin. So I try to be a rock instead. You know, half these people are here out of nosiness. They want to see how I handle Sara. And how bad I feel.”

  “So how do you feel?”

  “Pretty lousy,” she said, laughing shortly. “You know me. I always felt guilt over things I only thought of doing, never mind things I’ve actually done. I can’t get it out of my head that I didn’t call him on his birthday. I should have called him, Merry. It was three months ago. I thought about it that day, and I decided not to. Can you believe that? As if he’d be around next year to call instead. I’m such a fucking idiot.”