Death in Rough Water

by Francine Mathews

  “The what?”

  “Cadaveric spasm. See the way the hand is clenched around the har­poon shaft? It went through her ribs and into her heart, Chief, and she died almost instantly, clutching at the weapon. Her muscles contracted and froze. That looks like rigor, even if it happened only two minutes ago. She might have been killed by the guy who discovered the body. Though I doubt it. She’s cooled too much for that.”

  “Okay, okay,” John Folger said, with sudden distaste. Fairborn’s casual familiarity with a corpse never failed to disturb him. He glanced at Del’s face, the hand still clenched on the harpoon, and turned away. She was too close to be discussed so irreverently. Why did he care when this had been done to her, anyway?

  “You’ve got to realize, Chief,” Fairborn said, “I just don’t assess rigor that often. I attend births, not deaths. Other than that Mason guy last year, we haven’t had a murder in a decade. Not that I’m complaining. Give me an induced labor anytime.”

  Nantucket had no coroner. Unattended deaths—bodies discovered by a neighbor, for example—were routinely examined by Fairborn and a few other island doctors on call to the police, and then shipped to Sandwich for autopsy. In serious cases—where murder was suspected—the corpse f lew to the state crime lab in Boston. Adelia Duarte would be following Mitch Davis’s corpse there.

  “She’s got several slashes on the right forearm,” Fairborn continued, “and a puncture wound in the left shoulder. The slashes are probably defensive—she was holding the arm up before her face—and the punc­ture is where he missed the f irst time.”

  “You f igure it was a guy?”

  “Not necessarily. I was just being sexist,” the doctor said. “The wound is very clean. Even without looking at the dart, I’d say it’s got to be pretty sharp.” He hesitated, assessing Del’s chest. “It went right through the ribs here, and angled upward toward the heart. Not a blow that had to penetrate the sternum. A woman could have done it. This woman sure could have. She was adept at using this thing, wasn’t she?”

  “So I understand.”

  “It doesn’t seem like a woman’s weapon, all the same. More like something the victim picked up to defend herself with, and then had it turned against her. That’s my bet.”

  “So there was a f ight. She wasn’t just surprised.”

  “By a six-foot-long harpoon aimed at her chest? I don’t think so.”

  “She was supposed to go harpooning with Rafe this morning. That’s why he found her.”

  “Then she probably had the weapon waiting by the door, and tried a little preventive action when whoever it was threatened her. Big mis­take.”

  “Preventive action” sounded every inch like Del Duarte. John felt a wave of sadness wash over him. A less conf ident woman might have called the police when trouble started. A less conf ident woman might still be alive.

  “What about her hands?” he said, hunkering down to examine the scarlet-nailed f ingers clenched around the harpoon.

  “You want me to open them?” Fairborn looked for Clarence Strangerf ield, the crime scene chief, and found him on the other side of the living room, labeling a plastic jar containing a brownish liquid that was probably Del’s blood. “Clarence!”

  “Ayeh?”

  “You’re done photographing and sketching?”

  “She’s all yars.”

  Fairborn bent down and reached for Del’s f ingers with a grunt. “I’ll have to break them,” he said.

  Chief Folger nodded once, and then studied the far wall intently. Anything but look at Del, or toward the door where Merry still sat with Rafe on the front steps. There was the cracking sound of small bones. He winced.

  “Clarence,” Dr. John called over his shoulder, “we need a plastic forensic bag. And your labels.”

  When the f ire department’s black body bag had zipped closed over Del and the emergency crew had pulled away, John Folger stood a mo­ment in the doorway and stared down at his daughter’s blonde head. It was bent to her drawn-up knees, the curtain of hair hiding her face. He saw that her shoulders were still; no sobbing or grief to read from above. Her hands were linked over her ankles, the slender, tanned f ingers pressed white from the effort of holding on.

  “Meredith,” he said, cupping his palm over her hair, “we need to go home now.” She didn’t move. He looked at Rafe da Silva. The younger man said nothing, his eyes worried. John Folger lowered himself to the steps between his daughter and the foreman and threw an arm over her shoulders. “Sweetheart.” He shook her slightly.

  Her head came up from her knees, eyes unfocused. “It’s my fault,” she said.

  “Your fault? There’s no way this is your fault.” John Folger shifted around to hold her close. “You couldn’t have known this was going to happen to Del.”

  “Oh no?” She reared away from him. “Because I’m too stupid, right? You’d have to be an idiot not to have seen this coming. She thought Joe was murdered. She told us that. God knows who else she told when we didn’t believe her. Somebody must have known she wasn’t happy with the accident story. She’d even gotten a threatening letter—and I, I told her to bolt her door at night. She must have thought I was nuts. Her instincts were right. I mean, what would it take for me to believe her? Getting killed?”

  “She bolted her door?”

  Merry nodded.

  “And it was unlocked when you arrived?” This to Rafe da Silva.

  “Yep. Standing open, actually.”

  “She must have let the guy in, then,” John Folger said.

  Merry thrust away her father’s restraining arm and stood on the brick path in front of him. “I’m going to f ind whoever did this to Del and I’m going to make sure he fries. He’s not going to get away with this.”

  “With what, Meredith? With making you feel responsible?”

  “With Del. Lying in there like that—like a—like an animal—”

  “Meredith. Calm down.”

  She hesitated, then studied her Sperrys, an­gry and embarrassed at once. “You know what I mean,” she said.

  “Yes, I do. But you’re in no shape to inves­tigate anything.” His stomach knotted, but he pushed on. “I’m giving you two weeks’ vacation, Merry. You can help Del far more by settling her affairs and taking care of the baby. That’s what she’d have wanted, I think.”

  “Since I failed her so badly?” his daughter said bitterly. Her face went white and then red. She opened her mouth to say something—an appeal, John Folger sensed—and then read the futility of such words in his face. She turned away, one f ist slicing through the air in a gesture of rage and hopelessness, and walked off toward the Civil War monument on Main.

  Rafe got to his feet with a grunt. The two men stood looking after her—the tall, thin frame, moving swiftly and surely across the uneven brick sidewalk.

  “Poor little Girl Scout,” Rafe said.

  Peter Mason looked for her where Ralph Waldo had told him she would be: in the shallows off Jetties Beach, swimming laps vigorously up and down the shore. He had walked through the few sunbathers of early June to stand at the base of the lifeguard’s chair, eyes narrowed against the glare off the water, searching for the form knif ing through the waves. The Sound here was calmer than anywhere else on the island, buffered by the curve of land, the series of bars reaching toward the Cape, and the outf lung arm of the stone jetty that kept the harbor channel from completely silting closed. Windsurfers wheeled and rocketed in its pro­tected waters, and toddlers played.

  It wasn’t diff icult to f ind her; she was the sole swimmer in the water. She’d gone out past the bar, wanting a place her feet couldn’t touch. Calling to her would be useless, and disturbing to the sunbathers. Peter pulled his T-shirt over his head and kicked off his shoes, stepping onto the smooth pebbles that marked the beginning of the surf.

  Even the Sound was chilly in th
e f irst week of June—less than sixty degrees, he guessed. The shock of cold crept up his legs to the edge of his shorts; a surging wave slapped at his groin. He gave up and dove into the Sound, moving powerfully in a crawl, out past the line of breaking surf and the bar. Where the sandy bottom abruptly slid away, Peter stopped, treading water and shaking his hair out of his eyes, his breath coming in quick gasps.

  He surged upward to look for Merry. She was moving toward him, having turned in her lap while he edged out from shore, and her golden arms were slicing purposefully through the water. Heading for the jetty as she was now, she moved with the current, and in a very few seconds she would be upon him.

  Peter waited, wondering why he’d come and what he would say. He hadn’t thought clearly when Rafe had told him about Del. He’d gotten in the car out of blind instinct, certain he could help if only he could f ind her. Hubris, he thought. Why should she talk to him at a time like this?

  She must have glimpsed his body motionless in front of her. She swerved to avoid him. He reached out a hand as she passed and she came to a spluttering stop, outrage on her face until she understood who he was.

  “Peter.” She was breathless from exertion, her eyes wide and green under the black brows. Wet, her hair had darkened to the color of blond wood, swept back from her forehead and revealing the hard, unvarnished structure of her face. Cheekbone and brow hollow and lips were blue from cold, the cords in her neck straining with the effort to keep her head above water.

  What do I say?

  He reached for her instead, pulling her toward him, her body like carved stone in the wet Lycra, and incredibly her legs slid around his waist. She clung to him, all of her chilled by seawater and death, her cheek against his shoulder, and as Peter breathed deeply to ease the knot at his center, he felt her begin to shake. Salt tears and salt sea. Merry, alive within the circle of his body. He felt pierced by joy, and closed his eyes against it. In the midst of death we are in life, he thought, inverting the Biblical phrase with purpose. It seemed the only honest thing to do.

  He carried her halfway to shore, until the furrowed mouth of the bar bit at their feet and she dropped away from him. She was done crying, but kept her face averted for all that, the sun and wind sweeping wisps of wet hair like a veil across her eyes. He should have felt awkward, should have retreated from the feeling that had gripped him in the water, but he knew that that had been real, and this was not.

  “I’ve only got one towel,” she said abruptly.

  “I’ll use my T-shirt.”

  “Then what will you wear?”

  “A wet T-shirt?”

  Her lips started to tremble with what might have been laughter, but a horrif ied expression superseded the smile and she turned away, pulling her towel from a bag lying on the sand.

  “Del wouldn’t want you to stop smiling, Merry,” Peter said gently, “even though she died and you didn’t. You know that.”

  “She didn’t die, Peter,” Merry shot out. “She was murdered. Stuck through with a harpoon like a butterf ly on a pin.” She turned back to him, her rage on her face. “And here I am swimming with you, laughing at you—”

  “—as though it had never happened. Yes. That doesn’t make you a criminal.”

  “No,” she said. “No, my stupidity did that.”

  “Merry—”

  “I should have saved her, Peter. I should have known.”

  She fell silent, toweling off purposefully, pulling a shirt over her head, slipping on her shorts. She looped the handles of the beach bag over her right shoulder, ran her f ingers through her hair, and set off for the parking lot without looking at him. He followed, sobered, his wet shorts clinging to his legs uncomfortably. He’d go shirtless.

  He caught her up at her gray Explorer, and held on to the car win­dow frame as she opened the door. She looked at him f inally from her place behind the wheel, her face a picture of misery. He slid the back of his hand up her cheekbone, and she f linched, leaning away from him.

  “Your father won’t give you the case.”

  “Why should he give the case to somebody who’s already blown it? I had my chance. In my own kitchen, when Del told me Joe’s death wasn’t right.”

  “I thought you looked into it.”

  She laughed in contempt. “I verif ied my own conclusions. That she was in denial out of grief. Then I went to work on something more important, because my daddy told me to.” She lifted the keys to the ignition, then dropped them back on the seat. “She’d be alive if I’d taken her seriously, Peter. I can’t get around that.”

  “Why? Because you’d have stayed with her night and day? There’s nothing easier than killing a person, Merry. All the bodyguards in the world couldn’t have saved Del if someone wanted her dead.”

  “Don’t tell me what I want to hear, Peter,” she said. “From you, I expect the truth.”

  She pulled the door away from him, and he let her go.

  Chapter 14

  “Tess,” Rafe said.

  She was sitting slumped over the kitchen table, chin resting on one hand, and she stiffened perceptibly at his voice. He waited for her to look around. She didn’t. But she didn’t tell him to leave, either. Rafe approached her slowly and stopped a few feet behind her chair.

  “Del Duarte was killed last night,” he said, and waited. “Or maybe early this morning. They don’t know.”

  Tess did not respond.

  Rafe reached a hand toward her shoulder and then lost courage, his arm dropping to his side. The rigidity of her neck, her immobility, caused the hair to rise on the back of his head.

  A pile of fresh beets lay leafy and red on the table, their spiky roots tarnished with soil. The eleven-thirty lunch crowd was only an hour away, and Rafe knew the salad Tess intended to f ix—the beets boiled and napped in a raspberry vinaigrette, on mesclun, with a bit of goat cheese—but she hadn’t made much progress.

  “I found her. We were supposed to go f ishing today.”

  Tess’s chin dropped and she studied her hands, palms upward, as though her fortune could be read there. She might never have heard him. Then she pushed back her chair and started to walk out of the room. Something in Rafe snapped.

  “Don’t you even give a goddamn?”

  A hesitation, and then she looked at him. “How was it done?”

  “She was stabbed through the heart with her harpoon.”

  A light came over Tess’s face, like the lifting of a cloud. Rafe felt slightly sick. The corners of her mouth twitched, and he thought she was about to say something; but to his horror, she threw back her head and began to laugh.

  “Tess,” he said, shocked.

  The laughter grew more hysterical. “Do I give a goddamn, Rafe? You bet I do. I could scream her death from the housetops.”

  “You don’t mean that.”

  “Oh, yes, I do.”

  Rafe backed toward the door.

  “I wanted her to die,” Tess said. “And now I’m free.”

  “Jesus,” Will breathed. He was standing at the door, his face white, his stark eyes f ixed on his mother.

  Rafe steered him toward the hall and pulled the door shut behind them. “She been this bad all week?”

  “Not exactly. The past two days have been really weird. She’s looked like hell. I don’t think she’s been sleeping. Then she drinks coffee all day to stay awake, and her nerves are completely shot. She f ired Sammy yesterday for saying an order was late, then called him this morning and begged him to come back. We might as well close the restaurant down.”

  “I didn’t know,” Rafe said.

  “Of course you didn’t,” Will snapped. “How could you know any­thing? You’re just gone. Like we don’t even matter. You’re the reason Mom’s such a mess. I could—” He stopped, frustrated and spluttering, his f ists clenched.

  “You c
ould punch me in the mouth,” Rafe said dryly. “I don’t blame you. I’ll call Dr. John. Have him stop by and talk to Tess. Maybe she needs something to quiet her down, let her sleep. In the meanwhile, stick the ‘Closed’ sign on the door. We’ll f igure this thing out.”

  Will nodded, his dark blue eyes too large. The kid never got out from under trouble, it seemed. Rafe pulled Will’s head to his chest in a quick embrace, ruff led his hair, and opened the door.

  But the thought of Tess rode with him all the way home.

  Merry sat on the side of her bed near the open window, her hands lying uselessly in her lap. A breeze sent the smell of wild roses wafting through the room, the pervasive scent of Nantucket in summer; the June sun was pitilessly bright. From the kitchen below came the hot, bursting odor of blueberry muff ins and the sound of Ralph Waldo dragging a chair across the f loor. He was singing to Sara, and her childish, tuneless voice attempted to keep pace.

  “O do you know the muff in man,

  the muff in man, the muff in man,

  O do you know the muff in man,

  Who lives in Drury Lane?”

  A squeal of laughter and the sound of clapping hands. The day was starting, full of simple things and the ease of summer; Merry felt it, heard it, breathed it in. Del was dead. The sharp pain of having sur­vived overcame her. She closed her eyes, and saw Peter Mason’s face.

  The smooth wet skin, the hard slope of his shoulder where her cheek had lain; the sense of peace in his arms. For a few seconds, while the water buoyed them and they drew breath in unison, she had felt a relief and a completeness as solid as remem­bered childhood. She was inches from abandonment, from crawling into his bed and never coming back.

  But relief had turned to self-loathing. She had failed Del, and her f irst impulse was to use Peter and hide. She was despicable.

  She had driven aimlessly around the island after leaving him, heading f irst out to Madaket and then back along the Milestone Road to Siasconset, feeling caged by the monotony of the moors. She had struggled just to think—of who might have wanted Del dead. The murder had to be spontaneous, not planned. No one but Del could have known the harpoon would be waiting, sharp­ened for the morning hunt, by the front door. Whoever killed Del was moved to sudden violence. The door ajar, the lights burning, the baby unharmed—the visit wasn’t meant to end in murder.