Death in Rough Water

by Francine Mathews

  Thank God for Memorial Day weekend and the start of the tourist trade, Rafe thought, and felt a sudden sense of blasphemy. He’d always decried the yearly invasion of off-islanders, claiming they took and spoiled and gave nothing back; but Tess’s business had changed his mind. Her livelihood was directly dependent upon the summer people, and the good opinion of a few powerful critics in the mainland enclaves of Boston, Manhattan, and Washington, D.C.

  He hated the worry lines around Tess’s eyes and the heightened streaks of gray in her rich hair. She had suffered the vagaries of sudden death and accident too often in the past few years. First there was her husband, Dan, lost overboard in a nor’easter, and then her son, Will, had been struck down in a vicious attack. He had survived, but his motor skills were impaired and his after-school hours were spent in physical therapy rather than the hoped-for Nantucket Whalers football practice. By late April, he had f inally seemed his old self, despite the migraine headaches that still swept over him without warning, leaving him lost and silent in his darkened attic room for days at a time.

  Throughout the off-season, Tess had struggled to make ends meet and nurse her son back to health; the Mason Farms line had been born of frustrated creativity and f inancial need. Whether Peter had decided to back her out of kindness or a hereditary business sense Rafe couldn’t say, but he was grateful regardless.

  “This’d be great with the lamb-and-apple sausage, too,” Peter said, chewing the lettuce ruminatively. “But that’d be more of a spring salad.”

  “Right. Slice it thin, layer it with the chevre, and put it on baby f ield greens.” Tess turned from him briskly and sought out the vinegar. “I can see using the dressing with melon and papaya and some green chilies in a fruit salsa, too. But I’ll work on that tomorrow, okay?”

  “The restaurant opens tomorrow,” Peter said.

  “Salsa takes maybe twenty minutes. If it works, I’ll serve it for lunch. I’ll get it to you and add it to the f ile.” Tess was keeping an informal compilation of recipes, thinking long-term of The Greengage Way, her pet cookbook project.

  “We should enter these in the cranberry festival cook-off,” Peter said.

  “By October, I’ll have the kinks worked out. Something should win a f irst-prize ribbon.”

  Rafe handed Tess a towel. “I’ll run you home.”

  “I thought Will got his license,” Peter said.

  “He did.” She dried her hands briskly. “Why do you think I’ve got no car?”

  On the way back to town in Peter’s Range Rover, Tess was quiet and abstracted. Thinking about the food, Rafe decided. She had come to her business late in life, but it was her passion, born of innate talent and the thrill of making money from what she loved.

  “You look tired, hon,” he said. “Whaddya say we hit the Brotherhood for a burger and a beer?” Brotherhood of Thieves had changed over the years—from a subterranean burger dive to a full blown restaurant that served two hundred—and Rafe wouldn’t go near it once the summer people hit the island. For someone like Tess who charted every day with a complex palate, however, it was blessedly simple.

  She slid over and leaned her head against his shoulder. “Can I have an Allagash White Ale?”

  “You can have two.”

  “Nobody’s in town yet, really. It’ll be our last chance to have the Brotherhood to ourselves.”

  Once on Broad Street, he managed to f ind a parking space—some­thing else that would vanish with Memorial Day weekend—and got a table for two in a dim corner of the Brotherhood’s ground f loor. It was only f ive, but neither he nor Tess had eaten lunch, and the pros­pect of food was stimulating. There was a f ire burning on the hearth, perfect for the end-of-May chilliness that came off the water of an eve­ning, and Rafe leaned back in his chair with a sigh.

  “Get a beer in my hand now, and I’ll feel like I’ve died and gone to heaven.”

  “You work hard today?”

  “Nope.” He grinned. “But I was probably thinking too much.”

  “About what Merry said?” Tess’s eyes dropped to her hands. She was worrying at her engagement ring, sliding it nervously back and forth. Sometimes Rafe wished he’d given her a car or something practical in­stead, but he shuddered to think what she’d have done with a steering wheel in times of mental turmoil.

  “You think it’s a bad idea for me to crew for Del,” he said f latly.

  “Not because I’m jealous, Rafe. You don’t think that, do you?”

  “Of course not,” he lied.

  “I’m too much of an adult not to trust the man I love, even if he’s spending eight hours in the sun on a small boat in the middle of the Atlantic with a woman ten years my junior who’s known for her loose morals.”

  “Adelia Duarte’s never been known for loose morals,” he said, “and you know it, Tess. She made a mistake, is all—” He bit his tongue. The last thing Tess needed to hear was his defense of a woman she’d decided to mistrust.

  “Hi, folks!” A cheery college kid of a waiter, on the island early and clearly ready to enjoy the summer. “Have you seen our specials on the blackboard?”

  “Yep,” Rafe said, to stem the endless recitation of ingredients he knew would follow. “And I think we’ve decided.”

  “Great! What can I get for you this evening?”

  He looked at Tess, who was gazing stonily into the f ire. “The lady’ll have a Cisco burger,” he said, “and I’ll have a Steakhouse. Medium. A Whale’s Tail and an Allagash.” He slapped the menus shut and handed them to the waiter with a smile. The kid nodded at both of them and headed for the kitchen.

  Tess stood up immediately and stalked after the waiter, all her fury in her thin form. She grabbed him by the elbow. Changing her dinner, Rafe thought. She’d probably really wanted the barbecue cheeseburger he’d or­dered for her—it was her standing meal at the Brotherhood—but God forbid that the defender of Adelia Duarte should be right about anything.

  Tess slumped back down in her seat, avoiding him with her eyes.

  “So if you’re not jealous, why are you so pissed?”

  “Because I can’t believe you’d be stupid enough to alienate Peter Mason,” she said. “Running around after swordf ish—which, believe me, I know as a restaurateur are scarce as hens’ teeth—when you can make a steady income and have the stability you do after six years at Mason Farms—” She put her face in her hands in frustration, and Rafe saw with alarm that she had begun to cry.

  “Tess,” he said, reaching a hand to her shoulder gently, “Peter doesn’t mind. This is a slow point in the farming season. I’ve got some days free. There’s no harm in it, girl. And I’d be helping out an old friend.”

  “I’m just so afraid,” Tess said. Her voice was muff led by her f ingers.

  “Of what?”

  “Of you. Of the whole f ishing thing. I know you, Rafe—you’ve never gotten over your love of that life. It’s in your blood. The slow season will turn into the high season, and you’ll be out there just one more day, and pretty soon you won’t be there when Peter needs you for the cranberry harvest, and you’ll just gradually slip away. Back to boats and the craziness of the f ishing grounds and the relentless work and the lousy money.”

  “Tess—”

  “Well, I’ve lived that life, Rafe.” Her head came up out of her hands, and he saw the reddened wetness where she’d rubbed at her eyes. “I lost Dan to it. We never had a dime we hadn’t spent three times over, and we were never out of debt a single day of our married lives. He handed me that debt at the side of his grave, and I’m still not close to paying it off. I’ve only added to it. Can’t you see that f inancial security is the one thing I need in my life?”

  “I thought what you needed was me,” he said, feeling suddenly cold.

  “Not if you’re on a f ishing boat. I left that life behind me. I can’t face the instab
ility now, or the possibility of—loss. You could die out there like Dan did. Like Joe Duarte did, for God’s sake. Don’t you guys ever learn?”

  “Dan and Joe were exceptions,” Rafe said falteringly.

  “And you never believe that anything will happen to you, do you?” She laughed, a short, humorless sound. “I’m just starting to make a foot­hold in a world I love, and I will not allow myself or my son to be dragged back down. I want Will to grow up knowing there’s something more to life besides gutting f ish and mending nets.”

  “Is that an ultimatum?”

  She looked back at him wordlessly.

  “Is it, Tess?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Well, you think about it. Because July twenty-third isn’t far away. And when I marry, Ms. Starbuck, I intend it to be for richer, for poorer, in good times and in bad, in farming or on the water. And I intend it to be for keeps.” He pushed back his chair, pulled out his wallet, and tossed f ifty dollars on the table. “Wouldn’t want you to worry about the bill,” he said, and turned away.

  There was a sharp ping on his back followed by a metallic clink at his feet. She’d thrown her engagement ring as he walked out the door.

  Chapter 5

  Peter Mason had watched Rafe and Tess drive away from his open front door, then shut it carefully. He intended to pursue the salad dressing—this time as accom­paniment to the marinating chicken breasts Rebecca had left on the counter for his supper. He would grill and slice them into the lettuce he’d pulled from the garden that morning, open a bottle of chardonnay, and tuck into a healthy meal that felt like Memorial Day weekend. All it lacked was company.

  He stopped in the act of opening the refrigerator, his eyes focused on the kitchen clock. For some reason the numbered dial had been overlaid with Merry Folger’s face. What was he waiting for? He’d been haunted by the blonde detective throughout the winter, the strongest proof he could f ind that he’d recovered from a dec­ade-long obsession with his college sweetheart. Seeing Alison after his brother’s murder had f inally put to rest the long ache; he no longer mourned his broken engagement. Instead, he’d exchanged Christmas cards with her. And lately, when the form of a woman invaded his dreams at night, exquisite and pulsating and elusive as fog, she had borne the sharp cheekbones, the eyes green as new leaves, of Meredith Folger.

  But what of Merry herself? On every occasion that Peter had seen her during the past eight months, she had seemed much as usual—friendly, warm, and carefully profes­sional. He shut the refrigerator door without retrieving the lettuce and slid into a kitchen chair.

  It was important, after all, to approach emotion with logic. Never mind that the two had nothing to do with each other. It was part of his education to consider a problem objectively—and to fear the consequences of impulse.

  What if he asked Merry out, for example, and she rejected him? Would it be wiser not to ask at all?

  Nah.

  He’d wasted too long being safe. It was time to call her.

  He picked up his cell phone before he could change his mind.

  She arrived looking as cool and elegant as if she’d just stepped from a luxury hotel instead of the kitchen on Tattle Court, where in fact she’d been feeding Sara Duarte her supper. She had changed from her jeans into a jade-green washed silk sheath—nothing expensive, but clean-lined and simple enough on her tall, thin frame that it looked like a million bucks. The color exactly matched her eyes. Peter drew a sharp breath when he saw her step out of her new unmarked police Explorer, struck by the fact that she had gone to some effort over his invitation, and too wary to consider what that might mean.

  She smiled when she saw his face in the window; and all he could think was, Where does she get off being so calm?

  The dinner had turned into something more elaborate than grilled chicken salad during the hour preceding her arrival, and he hoped he didn’t look too eager, with his smoked bluef ish pâté and his corn muff ins and the new red potatoes sliced over baby Bibb lettuce—but Merry was a good little eater and dove into the food with a sigh of delight, allowing him to ref ill her glass with the chilled chardonnay, moisture pearling the side of the crystal until she pressed it against her forehead and closed her eyes, in a gesture at once so sensual and childlike that it tightened his throat.

  He had promised himself he would not push her this evening; he didn’t want to scare her off. So he focused on grilling his chicken while she told him about Adelia Duarte and her father and the possibility of a murder case, however unlikely. What he wanted was to reach out and take hold of her long, thin f ingers, the hands that were tanned and weathered from a lifetime in sun; wanted to kiss her palm and then the forehead she had tried to cool with her glass. He shut his eyes.

  “So we’re going tomorrow. Do you want to come?”

  He blinked and looked back at her, and for an instant, perhaps, she saw the intensity he’d been masking. He recognized it in her face, the way her features went blank in surprise and then recovered. She took a sip of wine.

  “Go where?”

  “Swordf ishing. With Rafe and Adelia and me. It’ll be a wonderful day on the water—like nothing you’ve ever done. Say you’ll come, Peter.”

  He held her eyes a minute, assessing. She didn’t blink. “Maybe I will,” he said.

  They left the Town Pier off South Beach at six in the morning, when the sun laid a white light on the water and the coffee in Rafe’s thermos tasted very good. Peter and Merry were braced by the long steel pulpit jutting from the bow, Rafe was at the helm, and Adelia studied the charts. The Cormorant was a forty-four-foot sportf ishing boat she’d chartered cheap from one of Joe Duarte’s cronies, past all f ishing now and only too glad to earn something from the custom Brownell he kept loitering at its mooring. They made their way through the harbor to the narrow channel between the jetties and Nantucket Sound beyond. Out past Point Rip, a huge submerged sandbar that signaled its presence with white-rilled waves and a darker shadow on the nautical charts. Then into the broad depth of the Great Round Shoal Channel, and f inally, when the coffee was long gone and they’d progressed to Rebecca’s muff ins, toward the deceptive and shifting bars of the Great Round Shoal itself, northeast of the island, where entire schools lurked in the shimmering depths and many a boat had run aground in decades past.

  An hour went by. The great swords were elsewhere.

  “Let’s head for the wreck of the Andrea Doria,” Rafe said.

  “That’s forty miles south.” Del looked annoyed.

  “If they’re in Nantucket waters, they’re basking over that ship.” Rafe chewed his beard, holding in his temper.

  Del scanned the horizon an instant, then shrugged. “Ta bom,” she said. “Let’s go.”

  Rafe throttled the engines higher and turned the boat toward the waters beyond Siasconset.

  Two hours or so passed in surging motion. Adelia took the wheel, one eye on the charts, and Rafe came forward to where Peter sat, quiet in the rush of the wind and sun, his face speckled with the white spots of dried salt from the spray shushing over the Brownell’s bow. He was wearing faded Nantucket Reds and Sperrys, his traditional sailing togs, with a heavy sweatshirt to ward off the chill. The wind had raised goosef lesh along his thigh.

  “Happy?” he asked Rafe.

  Rafe shrugged. “I’d be happier if Tess weren’t in such a snit.”

  “Take her some swordf ish steaks this evening and tell her I caught the thing,” Peter said. “Maybe she’ll get over it.”

  “Fat chance. If we even see a sword today.”

  “That rare?”

  “That rare. Most Atlantic f ish are off Nova Scotia, where there’s a harpoon f leet. The long-liners f ight the harpooners for quotas—catches are regulated, you understand—but if you’ve got a sport f ishing license from NOAA you can go out like Del and catch one per trip. I doubt that’
ll happen today—swords have been overf ished for decades, by driftnets and Spanish long-liners in particular. Those boats’ll put out a thousand hooks at a time and take everything they can get. It shows in the catch: the f ish coming in to market are half the size of the ones we caught when I was a kid.”

  “So how big are we talking?”

  Rafe pursed his lips. “Couple hundred pounds, maybe. A good sword can weigh half a ton and be f ifteen feet long—not that we see many of ’em anymore. But you go up against one of these babies traveling f ifty miles an hour, with your feet in that pulpit and a harpoon in your hand, you’d better not blink. Sometimes they even attack the boat. It’s the only thing comes close to Moby Dick these days.”

  Peter looked toward Adelia, who was studying gauges on the bridge. She had the short, sturdy body of a Portuguese f isherman, the muscled arms and the strong legs. She looked bred into this life, as indeed she was. Her long dark hair was pulled through a baseball cap—a swordf ishing cap, as Rafe had reminded him—and her face was intent and ef­f icient.

  “She doesn’t look like she blinks much,” Peter said.

  “Sure don’t. But we’ll have to see.”

  “We’re at thirty fathoms, Rafe,” Adelia called out.

  “What’s the water temperature?”

  “Hovering right around seventy.”

  “That’s it. Start lookin’.” He turned to Peter. “Few years ago when I was still working my cousin’s boat out of New Bed, the swords used to bask along this thirty-fathom line. Two miles north, two miles south, you won’t f ind ’em, but if they’re here, they’re here, you see what I mean.”