The Bay at Midnight

by Diane Chamberlain

  “I loved Nancy Drew as a kid,” I said. “And I loved writing. So it seemed a natural fit.”

  “Ah, yes,” he said, as the detective continued writing on her pad. “You know, I remember reading an article about you in some…I don’t know, probably some magazine or newspaper, where you said that when you were a child, you entertained your friends by making up mysterious events and pretending they’d occurred in your neighborhood.”

  Were we still in the small-talk mode, or did I detect a subtle shift in the tone of his questioning? “That’s true,” I said.

  “And then there was the real mystery…the ultimate mystery in your own family,” he said.

  I was confused for a moment and must have looked it.

  “The murder of your sister,” he said.

  “Oh,” I said. “Yes.” I shifted in the hard, armless chair. I wanted to cut to the chase. I wanted to tell him and the so-far-silent Detective Engelmann that I’d always suspected Ned was guilty and that, in my opinion, that was what he’d been alluding to in his letter. But this was not my show, and I waited for the next question.

  “What can you tell us about George Lewis?” he asked.

  The thought of George brought an rueful smile to my lips.

  “He was a teaser,” I said. “I spent quite a bit of time with him and his sister, Wanda. I don’t think he knew who his father was, and I’m not sure what happened to his mother. He and Wanda had been raised by a cousin, Salena. I think his family was very poor, but they were close to each other and there was a lot of affection between them.” I remembered the look of daggers George had sent my father the day Daddy came over to drag me home. “He had a tough facade and was probably pretty streetwise.”I added, “Although I’m only guessing. I never actually saw that side of him. It makes me so angry…so upset…to know that he went to prison for something he didn’t do.”

  The lieutenant nodded. “I imagine the person who’s responsible for your sister’s murder carries a lot of guilt around for letting the wrong person go to prison.”

  I didn’t miss the present tense in his sentence. “Well,” I said. “It’s my opinion that Ned Chapman was that person and that his guilt is what ultimately did him in.” I was hoping we could get down to the nitty-gritty now, but Lieutenant Jaffe folded his hands on the table and leaned forward.

  “You understand,” he said, “that we have to look at every angle on this case. We have to start fresh. We have your statements from 1962, but it’s important for us to look at this case with a clean slate.”

  I nodded, feeling uncertain. I wanted to get this over with, to review the statements I’d made as a twelve-year-old and get the recitation of those memories out of my way. That wasn’t going to happen though, at least not yet.

  “Tell us about Isabel,” Lieutenant Jaffe said.

  The question was so open-ended, I didn’t know quite what to do with it.

  “She was beautiful,” I began. I wished the chair I was sitting in had arms. My hands felt heavy and awkward in my lap. “And she was rebellious. A typical teenager. She snuck out every night to meet Ned at the platform on the bay.” I was quiet a moment, trying to figure out what else I should say about Isabel. The only sounds in the room were the quiet whirring of the tape recorder and the tip of the detective’s pencil racing across her notepad. When she had finished whatever she was writing, she looked up and spoke for the first time.

  “How did you know she was sneaking out every night?” she asked. She had rather amazing green eyes, the color of new grass, and I wondered if she was wearing special contacts.

  “I knew because I saw her,” I said. “Because I was sneaking out myself.” Surely they already had this information in the old records of the case. But, as the lieutenant said, they were starting fresh.

  “What was your relationship with her like?” he asked.

  I looked away from him quickly, annoyed with myself for doing so. I did not want to talk about my relationship with Isabel, and I knew that my sudden inability to look at my questioners made me suspect in their eyes. That’s what this is about, I realized. They didn’t care why I thought Ned had done it. They wanted to know my role in Isabel’s death. My anxiety took a sudden, unexpected leap.

  “We were close when we were young,” I said, lifting my gaze to look squarely at the lieutenant, then the detective. “But there were five years between us and we drifted apart as she got into her teens, which was only natural. We didn’t have much in common anymore.”

  “Did you argue a lot?” Detective Engelmann asked.

  “Bickered,” I said with a shrug. “Typical sibling rivalry.”

  “And how about Ned Chapman?” the detective asked. “What was he like?”

  I felt a hot flash start to prickle and burn on the top of my head. Damn. In two seconds, my face would be as red as my shirt. I did not look away this time, though. I held the woman’s grass-green gaze as I answered. “He seemed nice,” I said. “I mean, I’d known him all my life, since he lived next door to us during the summer. He was the lifeguard at the beach. But you can’t really know what’s going on inside a person. He was nice on the exterior, but who knows what was going on inside him.”

  “You had a crush on him.” The lieutenant made it a statement rather than a question.

  I shrugged again. “A typical preteen sort of crush,” I said. I was using the word typical too much and wondered if they’d noticed. I could barely breathe for the heat radiating down my neck and chest. I waved my hand in front of my face, looking apologetic. “Hot flash,” I said. “A nuisance.”

  They smiled at me as if they understood, but given Detective Engelmann’s age and Lieutenant Jaffe’s gender, I was certain neither of them had a clue how I was feeling. I wanted to pick up the detective’s rapidly filling notepad to give myself a real fanning.

  “Were you jealous of Isabel?” Lieutenant Jaffe asked.

  My eyes darted away from him again. Damn it. What was wrong with me? I wanted to say, Of course I was jealous of her. Weren’t you jealous of your older siblings? Instead, I steadied myself and nodded. “In some ways,” I said. “I wished that I’d looked like her and that I was her age and could have the freedom she did.”

  “Who knew she would be on the bay at midnight on August fifth, 1962?” Detective Engelmann asked.

  “I did,” I said. “And Bruno—Bruce—Walker. And possibly George Lewis, although I was never sure of that. If he knew, then Wanda Lewis probably did, as well. And, of course, Ned Chapman.”

  “Although according to the old report—” the Lieutenant fingered the file in front of him, although he did not open it to look at the pages “—Ned Chapman had asked you to tell Isabel that he couldn’t meet her that night.”

  “Well, yes, but he later said he might be able to.”

  “You were really known for your storytelling back then, weren’t you?” the detective asked me.

  They were jumping from topic to topic so quickly that my overheated brain could barely keep up, and once again, I was not sure exactly what she meant.

  “I read a lot,” I said. “I read Nancy Drew books aloud to George and Wanda.”

  “But you also made things up, right?” she asked. “The way you made up stories about events in your neighborhood to excite your friends.”

  I stared at her, uncertain how to respond. I felt something like hatred for her building inside me. When I didn’t respond to her question, the lieutenant spoke up.

  “Let me try to summarize what you’ve told us so far,” he said. “There was some sibling rivalry between you and your sister. You were jealous of her. You knew where she’d be that night. You regularly sneaked out of the house.You had a crush on—”

  “Stop it.”I stood up, the chair scraping the floor. “I didn’t come here for this,” I said. “I came to help in your investigation. I came to tell you what I remember, not to be accused of murdering my sister. I didn’t kill her, if that’s what you’re getting at. I would never have hurt h
er.”

  “Please sit down again,” Lieutenant Jaffe said calmly, and against my better judgment, I did so. I sat on the edge of the chair, though, ready to make my exit.

  “We have to look at everyone involved,” he said. “Everyone who could have been in the same place as your sister that night. That includes you.”

  I held on to my anger. If I didn’t, I knew I would start to cry. “I didn’t kill my sister,” I said, slowly and deliberately. “I had nothing to do with it.”

  The lieutenant suddenly looked at his watch, then stood up. “We’ll be talking with everyone,”he said. “And we appreciate you coming in.”

  Was that it? I’d been expecting the handcuffs to be produced at any second. I was thinking about my lawyer, who’d never handled a criminal case in his life. But now, free to go, my thoughts shifted to my mother.

  “Are you going to need to talk with my mother?” I asked, slowly getting to my feet. Detective Engelmann was still sitting at the table, still writing. She didn’t even lift her head from her work.

  “Most likely, yes,” Lieutenant Jaffe said. “You don’t have a problem with that, do you?”

  I shut my eyes, holding on to the back of the chair for balance. I felt a little dizzy, and my mind was slow and logy. If I answered yes to his question, it would look as though I was afraid of what my mother might say. If I explained that my family never talked about Isabel’s death, it would look even worse. I opened my eyes and spoke the truth. “I don’t want my mother to suffer any more than she has,” I said. “I don’t want her to endure…” I waved my hand through the air, encompassing the room, my two questioners and the entire situation. “I don’t want her to have to deal with all of this,” I said.

  “We understand,” the lieutenant said. “And we’ll keep that in mind.”

  CHAPTER 20

  Julie

  1962

  “How about we go to the beach today, girls?” Mom said. All the women in the family—my sisters, grandmother, mother and myself—were relaxing around the porch table after a breakfast of fruit salad and French toast.

  “Okay,” Lucy said. “Just don’t expect me to go swimming.”

  “Not if you don’t want to.” My mother leaned over to brush a crumb from Lucy’s lip, then she sat back to admire her youngest daughter. “You’re turning a nice nut-brown color,” she said.

  Of the three of us girls, Lucy was the least tan, since she spent most of her time indoors reading or playing cards with Grandma, but it was impossible to be at the shore and avoid the sun altogether.

  “I promised Mitzi and Pam I’d go to the beach with them,” Isabel said, then added quickly, “but I’ll see you there.” She was sitting on the side of the table closest to the house, the seat that would give her the best view of the Chapmans’ backyard. Her huge, almond-shaped eyes darted in that direction every twenty seconds or so. She was so obvious I couldn’t believe my mother never caught on. Did Mom think for one minute it was Mitzi Caruso and Pamela Durant that Isabel wanted to hang out with at the beach?

  But I supposed I was no less skillful in masking my real intentions.

  “And I want to stay around here,” I said, wishing I could turn around in my seat to see if the Lewises had arrived yet across the canal.

  My mother raised her eyebrows at me, obviously suspicious, and I ran my fork through the syrup on my plate to avoid her scrutiny. “Maybe I’ll fish and catch something for dinner,” I added, for something to say. I waited for her to admonish me not to cross the canal, knowing I could not disobey her direct command to stay in our yard, and I was relieved when she didn’t give it. Instead, she turned to Grandma.

  “Why don’t you come with Lucy and me today, Mother?” she asked. Grandma always seemed content to stay in the house, sweeping the floors or doing the laundry, an arduous job without a washing machine.

  “Well, maybe I will for a change,” she said, surprising everyone.

  Perfect, I thought. No one would be around to care what I did. Grandpop was on an all-day fishing trip with some of his buddies. He’d invited me to join him, but I’d gone with that group last summer and had felt like I didn’t belong—which I didn’t. Everyone took off for the beach after we’d cleaned up from breakfast. I grabbed my bait bucket and walked to the end of the road. Happy in my freedom, I made up a little song about the dragonflies as I walked along the path through the tall reeds until I reached the area where Grandpop kept his killie trap. I dropped to my knees in the damp sand, tossing my binoculars over my shoulder so I didn’t get them wet, and was pulling the trap from the water when someone called out, “Who’s there?”

  I jumped, startled, before I recognized the voice as Ethan’s.

  “Where are you?” I asked.

  “Over here.” His voice came from somewhere to my left. I had to wade into the water to circumvent the reeds and cattails and finally saw him sitting cross-legged in the shallows, the water lapping at his knees. He was wearing only his trunks, and the freckles on his bare chest seemed to have converged to give him something of a tan.

  “What are you doing?” I asked.

  “Come look,” he said. “I found some baby eels.”

  I had never seen a baby eel, and I was curious. I stepped as close to the grass as I could, trying not to disturb the water. Then I knelt down next to him, so close I could smell the suntan lotion on his skin.

  “There.” He pointed.

  I saw three squiggly black eels, thinner than a pencil, wriggling below the water’s surface.

  “They’re so cute,” I said.

  “I wanted to catch one of them to dissect,” Ethan said, “but I can’t. They’re just babies.”

  He was weird, but I was touched nevertheless. “Yeah,” I said. “Don’t do it.”

  He glanced in the direction of the bait trap, which he could not possibly see through the tall, thick wall of grass. “Didja get a lot of killies?” he asked.

  “Haven’t checked yet.”

  “Where’s your grandfather?”

  “On a fishing boat.”

  “So…” He pushed his thick sunglasses higher on his nose. “You going across the canal to fish today?”

  “Yes,” I said. “And keep your big mouth shut about it.”

  “I will if you take me with you.”

  “I’m the only one allowed over there,” I said, not even sure what I meant by the statement. All I knew was that I had no desire to share my new friends with Ethan. He’d want to study Wanda and George under a microscope the way he did his sea creatures.

  “I’ll tell, then,” he said.

  “You are such a spaz.”

  “Takes one to know one,” he replied.

  “Don’t you dare tell, or else,” I said, without finishing the sentence. I let the implied threat hang there in the air as I walked through the water, hoping that would be enough to deter him.

  There were loads of killies flapping helplessly against the wire walls of the trap as I pulled it onto the sand. I emptied the small fish into my bucket, then tossed the trap into the water again. I didn’t bother calling goodbye to Ethan as I walked back along the path to the road.

  Wanda waved from her side of the canal as I got into the runabout. I couldn’t wait to get over there. I was bringing The Bungalow Mystery with me today, since I thought it fit perfectly with being down the shore. I put everything I needed in the runabout, then headed across the canal. The current was strong in the direction of the river, but I had no problem and I pulled easily into the dock between the Lewises and the Rooster Man’s shack. That dock felt nearly as familiar as my own these days. I kept thinking of how Mr. Chapman had defended my being over there to my father. I had the respect of the chief justice of the New Jersey Supreme Court. I adored my father, but he was wrong about this.

  George stood on the bulkhead above my boat.

  “Can you carry me and Wanda to the river?” he asked. He pointed in the direction of the Manasquan River.

  “What?”
I wasn’t sure what he meant.

  “We ain’t catching nothin’ here,” he said. “But a guy told us they biting in the river.”

  Wanda appeared at his side. “Salena says we can go if you can carry us,” she said.

  Salena’s crazy, I thought. Couldn’t she see how fast the current was moving? I was not allowed to take the boat to the river, which was a mile and a half north of my house through the canal. I wasn’t allowed to take it north of my house, period. But what an adventure it would be! I looked toward my bungalow, barely able to see the porch because of the bulkhead being in the way. No one was there, though. No one would know.

  I tipped my head back to look at George and Wanda again. “Okay,” I said. I leaned over and grabbed a rung of the ladder to pull the boat close to the side of the dock. “Get in,” I said. “And bring a net. I don’t have one.”

  They grabbed their gear and climbed down the ladder into the runabout. Salena appeared above us.

  “Come back by one, hear?” she said.

  “Okay.” I yanked the cord on the motor and inched into the canal, making sure I wasn’t pulling out in front of any boats that might be close to the bulkhead.

  Once in the canal, the current grabbed the boat and I held tight to the tiller handle to keep us on a steady course. As we passed my empty bungalow into the water north of it, I felt exhilarated. The low Lovelandtown Bridge was directly ahead of us, though. I’d sailed beneath it with my grandfather and others, but had never taken my boat through it by myself. The current was fast, and the too-close-together pilings of the bridge were coming up on us quickly, the water racing between them as rough as rapids.

  “Girl,” George said, “you know what you doin’?”

  “’ Course,” I said, hanging on to the tiller handle for dear life. I realized there was only one life preserver in the boat, and none of us was wearing it.

  A bigger boat was ahead of us and I knew its wake would only add to the turbulent water. If the current hadn’t been so strong, I would have tried to stall my boat and wait for the wake to run its course, but I had no choice. My sweaty palm was getting jerked back and forth on the tiller handle as we headed beneath the bridge. A huge wave from the wake of the boat rose up in front of us, and we sailed over it, then plunged into the water on the other side as a second wave headed straight for us. I may have screamed. I surely said a quick prayer. I had just enough time to think about the sin I was in the middle of committing and how death might be a fitting punishment for it. The wave washed over the front of the little runabout, soaking us, splashing salt water into my eyes and my mouth, and for a moment I wasn’t sure if we were on the surface of the water or beneath it. How I kept control of the runabout, I couldn’t say, but I must have seemed very confident, because George and Wanda just whooped with the fun of it all, as though we were riding a nice, safe roller coaster.