Death in Rough Water

by Francine Mathews

  “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 f loor 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 f loor 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 feed 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’ve 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.”

  “Del—you can’t think like that.”

  “Then I guess I can’t think at all.”

  Merry was silent for a moment. She’d known Del for twenty-odd years. Despite the distance that had grown between them, she was prob­ably Del’s closest friend on Nantucket. And she knew that if their roles were reversed, she’d have felt the same way. Never mind that Joe Duarte hadn’t called his daughter in years; he’d had the last laugh. He’d died, the ultimate upping of the ante in a war of silence.

  “It’ll be over soon,” she said, reaching for Del’s hand. “You’ll be home in New Bed before you know it.”

  Del squeezed her f ingers in response, released them, and drew a deep breath. “Well, yeah, that’s what I’d like to talk to you about,” she said. “I’m thinking of staying.”

  “Here?” It was the last thing she’d expected. “So you’re not selling the house. From the way the real estate talk is going, you’ve got at least ten buyers in the living room alone. Do you want your old job back?”

  “With Tom?” Del shook her head. Three years ago, she had been Tom Baldwin’s personal assistant, and was, by all accounts, invaluable. She was smart, eff icient, and organized—the last something
Tom had struggled and failed to be.

  Del reached for a napkin to wipe Sara’s face. It was smeared with egg, like the sunrise smile of a clown. Sara pursed her lips and leaned away, her hands balled into f ists.

  “He hired a sub for me when I left, and he’s not gonna f ire her just because I’m back in town.”

  “Even if you could stand it,” Merry said.

  Del grinned. “Yeah, there’s that,” she said. “I’d probably go nuts. Too much a part of the past, you know?” She looked at Merry, weighing her words. “I’ve got a better idea. I’m going to take Pop’s boat out and f ish.”

  “You? Fish?”

  “Swordf ish, actually. You know what they’re getting for harpooned ones? It’s like a yuppie craze. Somebody f igured out that a harpooned f ish dies quicker and tastes better than one caught by the long-liners’ nets. Whole Foods pays through the nose for it, all over the country. So do restaurants.”

  “And God knows we have enough of those.” Nantucket’s restaurants were expen­sive, trendy, and geared to a moneyed crowd. “But Del—a harpoon?”

  “I’ve thrown one before,” she said, smiling. “You know how Pop was. He wanted a son and he got me. So he tried his best to turn me into a boy. I’ve been throwing a harpoon with him on the weekends since I was ten. He’d leave the Lisboa Girl at dock and take out the Praia—his thirty-footer—with me in the bow to spot. We caught a bunch over the years. You learn the knack. And you never forget the thrill.”

  “Aren’t swordf ish pretty scarce?”

  “Used to be,” Adelia said, “but lately the stocks have been recovering. Some of us think that’s due to the shift from longline to harpoon f ishing—swords aren’t being overf ished as badly as they were. My cousins in New Bed harpoon on the side. I went out with them a couple of times to get my arm back in shape, and it reminded me how much I missed being on the water. Pop used to say the harpooner’s arm was passed down through the blood, you know, ever since the whaling days. Knowing the sea and loving it is something Duartes are born with.”

  She paused and looked at Merry soberly. “Pop’s dead. I can’t bring him back. But now he’s gone, I miss a lot of things I thought I’d forgotten. Like hard work and cold spray and the f ight to the death. I want Sara to grow up a Duarte.”

  “You think you can make a living?”

  “I hope.”

  “If the swords play out, you can always switch to tuna.” The Japanese paid exorbitant prices—up to twenty thousand dollars a f ish—for prime bluef in tuna at auction.

  Del shook her head. “They’re even scarcer than swords.”

  Merry ran her f ingers through her blonde hair—still damp from the rain and the persistent humidity that came with it—and decided to concentrate on essentials. “Who’s going to crew for you?”

  “I haven’t f igured that out,” her friend admitted. “I’ll think about crew to­morrow. There has to be some guy on the island who’s strong enough to work for a woman.”

  “I’m not so sure,” Merry said carefully. “Precious few are willing to take orders from one.”

  “Nothing’s changed down at the station, eh, f ilha?”

  Merry was one of the few women on the Nantucket police force.

  Adelia’s sudden smile was like a snapshot of childhood. “Come f ish,” she said. “We could be the only girl crew on Nantucket. Think about it. We’d be a tourist attraction.”

  “We Folgers like to say that police work is handed down through the blood. Something we’re born with.”

  “I was afraid of that. Got any ideas about crew?”

  “I might. Give me a few hours.” She paused, and eyed the baby. “You’ll need child care.”

  “I know.” Adelia lifted Sara out of her chair and straightened the hem of her dress.

  “She’s beautiful, Del,” Merry said, squatting down to Sara’s eye level. She had the meltingly soft skin and the faint f lush of rose in her cheeks that come with the two-year-old’s territory. Her eyes were Merry’s exact shade of green. She smiled slowly at Merry and reached a hand out to squeeze her nose.

  “Yeah. She’s a sweetheart. Gives nobody trouble,” Adelia said soberly. “Hard to believe she comes from me.”

  Merry rose and brushed off her skirt. “What are you doing tonight? After this crowd clears out, I mean.”

  “Having dinner at your house, if I’m lucky.”

  “Good. I know just the person to take care of Sara.” She gave her friend a swift kiss, touched a hand to the child’s head, and was gone.

  It was only when the last of the guests had left, and she had begun to collect the scattered glasses lying about the living room, that Adelia realized Jackie Alcantrara was still in the house. Was it a slight cough, an overly loud exhalation of air, that had drawn her to her father’s “snug,” as he called it? Or the creeping sense of being not quite alone?

  The little den at the back of the house had never seemed big enough for more than one person. She’d rarely ventured farther than the thresh­old, even when she’d been desperate for her father’s notice. The space was still dwarfed by the cracked Naugahyde recliner at full stretch and the huge old desk in one corner, piled to its gills with papers, bills, and photographs of prize catches; and there was a strong odor of pipe to­bacco embedded in the f ibers of the room that brought her father back in a sharp rush. Thumbtacked to the fake dark paneling was a picture of herself, taken at Great Point Rip when she was f ifteen, holding high her f irst surf-caught blue.

  Habit stopped her in the doorway, a dishtowel f lung over one shoulder and a brace of wineglasses in her hands. Jackie was bent over the desk, rif ling through the papers, too intent on his search to notice her approach. At the sight of him—close-cropped bullet head, large animal hands cracked and roughened by weather, awkward, bulky body—she felt sharply afraid. She had made no mention to Merry Folger of the doubts that had troubled her since Joe’s death. In daylight, among friends, they seemed slightly hysterical, and that was not her style. But doubt tugged at her nonetheless. Standing before her now, Jackie was the embodiment of her worst suspicion.

  “Tell me what you’re looking for, and maybe I can help,” she said.

  He straightened as if he’d been shot, his face suddenly crimson, and shoved his hands in his pockets without a word.

  “What’s up, Jackie?”

  He shrugged. “You might as well hear it from me as anyone else,” he said, avoiding her eyes. “Your dad promised me his boat, when he was gone, since he had no sons and he f igured you wouldn’t be back after . . . And you’re a woman, anyway. It’s not like you’d need it.”

  “His boat?” Adelia said, aghast. “The Lisboa Girl?”

  Jackie nodded.

  “But it’s paid for. Free and clear. There’s no mortgage,” she added, as if this would make it plainer. Boats free of debt were an increasing rarity among New England f ishermen, and though Joe Duarte’s was old, it was worth at least a hundred thousand dollars. “He musta been nuts. Maybe he’d give you a break on the price, but—”

  “The word was give,” Jackie said f irmly, his color rising again. “And not just the Lisboa Girl, but the Praia as well.”

  “You’re dreaming! There’s no way he’d give you both.” It was the Praia she intended to use for swordf ish harpooning.

  “Dreaming? I’m dreaming?” Jackie said. “And what have you been doing for the past three years, Del, besides spreading your legs for any man in a pair of pants? While you were bumming around New Bedford with a bun in the oven, I was working myself to the bone to keep your dad on the water.” He came toward her, his blunt skull and bear paws made suddenly menacing by the smallness of the room and the viciousness of his words. Despite herself she leaned backward into the hall, a sick min­gling of rage and fear building in her throat.

  “I earned that boat, every foot of her, and the P
raia too. If it weren’t for me, Joe Duarte would’ve been f inished months ago, and much you cared about it. So don’t tell me what I know and don’t know, or what you’re due from a man you couldn’t trouble yourself to look after.” He was swaying slightly on his feet, as though he still felt a deck heaving beneath him. Adelia knew he’d drunk quite a bit that afternoon.

  “You’ve got your nerve, coming back here with that brat after what you’ve done, acting like you’ve never left and nobody the wiser.” His voice had grown harsh, the words slurring with anger. “You’ll get what’s coming to you, Del—that’s the truth, and everybody knows it. There’s not a man on the water won’t think it’s justice when Joe Duarte’s will is read.”

  “His will,” Adelia said dully. “Is that what you were looking for?”

  “I witnessed it. So I know what it says. I just f igured I’d f ind it before you did, in case you decided to trash it.”

  “Like I’d do that, Jackie. If Pop wanted you to have the boats, he wanted you to have the boats. But you won’t f ind anything in the desk—Pop gave up trying to, years ago. Now get out of my house.”

  Adelia felt suddenly weary, as though she were ancient beyond belief, and had survived the last century without a single night’s sleep. Pop gave away his boats. My boats. It was God’s little joke, spiking her plans and cursing her with characters like Jackie. Of course, her father had thought she’d never need her birthright. She’d left him, as Jackie said. The anger in the man before her must have been nothing compared to Joe Duarte’s.

  “I’ll call Felix Harper in the morning.” She turned away from the room. “He’s Pop’s lawyer. He’ll be able to answer all your questions.” And mine, she thought.

  “I’ll call him myself.” Jackie brushed past her heavily on his way to the door. She smelled the sour odor of stale whiskey.

  “You do that,” she said, watching him swing down the shining-wet brick path and through the picket-fence gate onto Milk Street, his f igure hunched against the violent gusts that still battered the island. Her moth­er’s peonies were sodden starbursts against the grass, the hydrangea heads were bowed to their knees in a welter of rain. She looked up at the heavy sky, the lowering dusk, and let the storm’s wet f ingers brush back her hair. The weather had settled in. Even Joe’s seabed must be uneasy to­night, with such turbulence sweeping the air above. The thought of him lost and alone in the Atlantic sent a sharp stab of pain through her stomach.