Death in Rough Water

by Francine Mathews

  The idea of Del throwing herself at Jackie was too ludicrous to be believed. But why would Jackie tell his wife such a story? “Did you know Jackie at the time?”

  “Oh, I met Jackie three years ago, at the Rose and Crown,” she said smugly. “All the girls were crazy about him. He couldn’t shake them off. But I knew just how to handle him. I acted like I’d seen his type a thousand times before, and I was looking for something better. He bit right away. We were married two years ago.”

  “And was Jackie working for Joe Duarte at the time?”

  “No,” Connie said, and clammed up, a slight sharpness in her eyes.

  Of course not. He was skippering the boat he would sink a year later.

  “This is a lovely house,” Merry said.

  “Isn’t it?” She leaped at the conversational change. “We were so lucky to get it. The owner came down a bit in the price. Not that there was anything wrong with it, you understand,” she said hastily, “just that—well, he liked us, and knew we were just starting out.”

  A sympathetic gesture. Something no Nantucket property-holder would be fool enough to make, with real estate prices as they were. “How long have you been here?”

  “Just a year.”

  So right after Jackie sank his boat and lost his job, he’d bought a house.

  “Do you work, Mrs. Alcantrara?”

  “Connie,” she said. “No. I used to do nails at the On-Glaze”—this was a salon on West Creek Road—“but Jackie doesn’t like his wife to work. A man should be able to support his family, Jackie says.”

  Then he’s one of the few f ishermen who can afford to be a chauvinist, Merry thought. Like almost everyone else, draggers depended on two incomes to make it. As f irst mate, Jackie might have cleared forty thousand dollars the previous year—if it was a good year. So how was he keeping his wife in chocolates and dye jobs?

  “Thank you, Mrs. Alcantrara,” she said, closing her laptop. “You’ve been very helpful. What do you do in the evenings when Jackie’s at sea? It must be very lonely.”

  “Oh, heavens,” she giggled. “I can never f ind enough time for all I do. I was tied up every night this week.”

  “Really?”

  “Uh-huh. Monday was book group. We’re doing Elin Hildebrand because she’s local. Tuesday I went to the Dreamland with Margot. Now what did I do Wednesday? Oh, yes. I watched TV. Reruns of Sex & the City. I have to do that when Jackie isn’t home. He says it’s a chick show.”

  On the evening of Del’s death Connie Alcantrara was alone. She could easily have decided to visit Del instead of watching a show she’d seen countless times before. But it would be risky; someone might have seen her car on Milk Street. And Merry couldn’t quite see Connie wielding a harpoon. Too icky.

  “And last night I worked the bingo table at the high school. A benef it for the Worship Center.” The Nantucket Worship Center was an inter­denominational group that held services out of the school.

  “May I ask you a question, Detective?”

  “Feel free,” Merry said.

  “Now that Adelia’s dead, what will become of that lovely house on Milk Street?”

  “I suppose it will be sold.”

  “And her estate goes to—?”

  “Her daughter, I would think. I don’t know if she left a will, but even if she didn’t, Sara’s her next of kin.”

  “Well, that might be enough to bring the father forward,” Connie said, interest lighting her eyes. “That house is worth a bundle. Which means the baby is, too.”

  “I hadn’t thought of it that way,” Merry said stiff ly.

  “Then I suppose you’ll be arresting that Dave Grizutto,” the other woman said comfortably.

  “Excuse me?”

  “The baby’s father. Dave Grizutto. He bartends at Brotherhood of Thieves. Don’t tell me you didn’t know? Jackie says it was all over the island once she left.”

  Not for the f irst time, Merry wished she’d been more involved in Del’s life the past few years. She knew Dave slightly—and remembered vaguely that he and Adelia had dated—but thought they’d broken up long before Sara was conceived.

  “He wanted the money, of course,” Connie persisted. “Or he wanted Del. And she spurned him. So he killed her. It’s obvious, isn’t it?”

  “Nothing about murder is obvious, Mrs. Alcantrara.”

  “Connie,” she said. “Do let us know if we can help with that baby. Dave Grizzuto is not the person to handle so much money. She’d be far better off in a stable family, don’t you think? And we’re practically family anyway. Joe did leave Jackie his boats. Which tells you something—he didn’t trust that daughter of his. I can’t get over him leaving her the house.”

  Chapter 16

  “Detective Folger,” Bill Carmichael said, slapping an empty manila f ile against his thigh, “I thought you’d gone on vacation.” Fine time for it, too, his tone suggested. The state policeman in charge of the arson investigation looked harassed. His eyes were deeply embedded in their sockets and threaded with red­dened capillaries.

  “I decided work was more important right now than time off,” Merry said.

  “I see. Or rather, I don’t, but never mind.” He brushed past her to his off ice and slumped behind his desk. Involuntarily, his eyes f luttered closed, and he grimaced, rubbing a hand against his forehead. Carmichael’s sandy hair was receding, and the dome of his skull had burned and peeled. Merry took the chair opposite his desk and waited for his eyes to open.

  His cell phone buzzed. He ignored it.

  “You alone here?” Merry said, glancing around.

  “Well, there are only three of us, and a secretary,” he said irritably. “Sam’s on patrol, Chuck has the day off, and Dottie stepped out for a cigarette. I assume you dropped in to hear what we’ve got, right?”

  “If there’s anything new,” she said.

  He laughed shortly. “The phone never stops.” Carmichael reached across the desk and stabbed his cell. “I’m not supposed to do that, but what the hell. It’s either silence or insanity. I’ve got boat owners calling when they can’t get anywhere with your emergency center; I’ve got reporters calling; I’ve got my bosses calling, and the f ire chief, and your dad, and Lisa Davis. She’s calling me at home—not that I blame her. And I can’t tell her a thing, except that the bullet that put Mitch away was a thirty-eight to the back of the skull. Small hole where it entered, helluva mess inside. The guy is toast and he’s got no nose, Merry, but can I tell her why? Nope.”

  “The weapon didn’t turn up in the water or on the beach.”

  “And it won’t. It’s probably in some­body’s boat locker. And the boat’s probably all the way to Long Island Sound by now.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean it was a random killing, that’s what I mean. It can’t be any­thing else. Think about it. Mitch is out there on the beach in the middle of a bunch of panicky boaters who’re trying to cross the f ire barricade to save their stinkin’ boats. He tries to stop some guy, words f lare up, the guy’s half nuts because he’s losing a fortune in f iberglass, and so he hauls off and shoots the jerk who’s trying to save his life. Then he gets in his boat and beats it.”

  “And yet the body was burned, not left on the beach.”

  Carmichael shrugged. “What wasn’t burned that night? Mitch couldn’t exactly get out of the way.” He shoved a toothpick between his teeth and commenced rolling it from one side of his mouth to the other, his eyes hard and bright. “There’s no way we’re going to track this one down.”

  “We could broadcast an appeal for witnesses,” Merry said. “If he was killed the way you think, somebody might have seen it.”

  “I’ve done that,” Carmichael said patiently. “Posted bulletins on the radio and the news. Now I’ve got the joy of sifting through all the garbage that’ll c
ome in for the one nugget of real information.”

  “I’ll help.”

  He looked at her from under his eyebrows, glowering. Nothing was going to cheer Bill Carmichael today.

  “Have you talked to Mitch’s wife?”

  “I told you, she keeps calling me.”

  “I mean about who might’ve wanted him dead.”

  “Oh, for crying out loud,” he said, slapping the desktop in frustration and thrusting his chair back against the wall. “Nobody wanted Mitch dead. That’s the problem. According to Lisa, he was the local pick for Miss Congeniality. Everybody loved him. The town will never recover from his loss. And you know, she’s probably not just painting a rosy picture. Sometimes nice people die for no reason at all, Detective. And we can’t assign the blame.”

  “I know,” Merry said. “So you’ve decided Scottie Flanagan’s theory is not worth looking into.”

  “What, that he was killed in revenge for his toilets?”

  “Hot-water showers. And ice machine.”

  “Maybe you guys have time to follow up leads like that,” Carmichael said, “but the state police do not, my dear.”

  “Okay, okay,” she said. “It was just a thought. Anything further on Joshua Field?”

  “Abbie Hoffman in Birkenstocks?” Carmichael said. “Nope. There’s nothing to tie him to the bomb—to its construction, that is. Just to ownership of the boat it was in. Even there, it’s his uncle’s boat. He’ll probably be sued for civil damages, and he’ll get a lawyer who’ll show that anybody could’ve rigged that device without the Baldwins’ knowl­edge. It’ll go nowhere.”

  “Were his f ingers tested for plastic explosive trace residue?”

  “My, my, my, didn’t we study hard at the academy,” Carmichael said sarcastically. “Your arson guru had it done. I think he hoped he’d f ind a dead Iranian at the bottom of the harbor, with a note proclaiming ‘Death to the Great Satan’ tacked to his head. He was sure the explosive was Semtex imported from Slovakia. When in fact he’s now determined it was American-made plastique you can steal from any construction site. And the timer was from Radio Shack, not Switzerland.”

  “Joshua Field works construction.”

  “And we do so much blasting on Nantucket. That sand sure gets tough for the backhoes to handle. Come on, Mere.”

  “So what about Field’s hands?”

  “Clean, of course. That’s not surprising. Three days elapsed between the bomb and the test.”

  Merry waited a second while Bill Carmichael toyed with his tooth­pick, his eyes drifting elsewhere. She recognized the expression. He was half attending to her and half focused on the thoughts that couldn’t stop whirling in his brain. She was the same way herself—asking questions about Field, and wondering whether Dave Grizutto had been in touch with Del since her return to the island.

  “Bill,” she said, rising from her chair, “somebody built a bomb and destroyed the pier. Somebody did that. Until we can f igure out why, we can’t begin to focus on who.”

  “Maybe there was no why, Detective. Maybe there was just a torching for kicks. The classic prof ile of an arsonist is a guy who gets a sexual high from watching things explode and burn. You’ve got to admit the pier was a hell of an orgasm.”

  The station door opened and shut. “Bill!” a woman’s voice called. “I brought you coffee!”

  Carmichael groaned. “Just what I need,” he said. “More Colombian speed. You taking off?”

  Merry nodded. “I’ll be in touch.”

  “Heard your friend bought it the other night.”

  The casual way of describing Del’s death struck Merry like a slap on the cheek.

  “Sorry to hear it.”

  “Thanks, Bill,” she said, and left, avoiding his eyes.

  Once back in her gray Explorer, she sat for a moment with her hands in her lap, staring blankly at the steering wheel. Nothing could be simpler than f inding out whether Del had seen Dave Grizutto before her death. She had left her cell phone on the Folgers’ dining-room table Sunday night. In the aftermath of the f ire, Merry had never found time to return it to her. And she knew Del well enough to expect every one of her appoint­ments to be carefully noted somewhere in the phone’s calendar. A chill rose up Merry’s back. My God, she thought. She might even have put down a date with death, days in advance.

  Y

  Rafe da Silva stood up to ease his aching back and rested his chin on the handle of his spade. “So you think I ought to talk to Merry?”

  He sounded doubtful and anxious, even to himself. Peter squinted up at him from his place in the dirt, halfway down the row of tomato plants he was staking. “Well, talking to Tess hasn’t gotten you anywhere.”

  “Except deeper in the hole.”

  He had stopped by the house on Quince Street that morning and found Will sitting morosely in the empty kitchen and a Closed sign on the restaurant door. The second weekend of the summer season, and the Greengage was turning away business. Tess was upstairs in bed, half conscious under the effect of Dr. John’s Valium. When Rafe bent over her pillow, he was shocked at the ravages the past twenty-four hours had written on her face. She stared f ixedly at the ceiling, her f ingers limp, her chest barely rising and falling with the effort of breath. Every inch of her cried out depression. He held her f ingers and received no pressure in response; nor did she bother to turn her gaze in his direction. He brought Will back to the farm for a few hours and put him in Peter’s study with a book, under the careful eye of Rebecca.

  “I wonder if this hasn’t been coming for a long time,” Peter said.

  “Tess’s blowup?”

  “The whole thing. She had nerves of steel those f irst few months after Dan drowned. You remember. Sold the scalloper, ref inanced the debt, put in a commercial kitchen. All between March and June, with Will walking around like a zombie. Then Will gets sent to the mainland for psychiatric work, and she runs the restaurant alone.”

  Peter ripped at a piece of sheeting with his teeth and tore it into a thin strip. The rag went under a tomato plant’s armpit and looped in a f igure eight around the six-foot stake.

  “Just as she’s through her f irst successful season, and Will’s back on the island starting school again, he gets pitched from his bike and ends up in Mass Gen. So Tess has to be stoic for the next six months until he’s out of the woods. And make ends meet somehow in the off-season, when the restaurant’s closed. Anybody’d have a nervous breakdown once they got a breather.”

  “Maybe,” Rafe said. “It’s just not like Tess.”

  “Of course it isn’t,” Peter said. “If it were, you wouldn’t think she was crazy. And you certainly wouldn’t think she was a murderer.”

  There it was, the word he’d been skirting. Murder. The fear that had gripped him since he’d heard Tess’s weird laughter yesterday morning, seen her rejoicing at Del’s death. Murder. He couldn’t seem to get away from it.

  “Go talk to Merry,” Peter said, standing up and dusting off his bare knees. Small grains of grit had embedded there and left a pattern like ostrich skin. “She’ll probably tell you Tess didn’t do it. You need to hear that, Rafe.”

  “I’m not sure it’ll help,” he said, swallowing. He lifted his chin from the spade and turned back to the beans he was cultivating. “She scared me bad, Pete. I’d never seen Tess so—evil. I can’t get it out of my head. Maybe I’ve never known her at all.”

  “You know her,” Peter said. “You just don’t know all of her. There’s ugliness in every one of us. Deep feeling—jealousy, fear—brings it out.” He stopped. Rafe had seen more of the ugliness of life than Peter could possibly imagine. “Few of us can admit that we’re happy when someone we hate is dead. It’s a nasty little secret.”

  “Very nasty.”

  “But Tess was honest about it. That suggests she had nothing to do with killin
g Del. And with Del gone, you’ll f ind the Tess you knew again, Rafe.”

  “But can I trust that it’s the real Tess?” the foreman said, stabbing at the dirt with his spade.

  Peter said nothing. He understood that trust could be broken as easily as a dropped glass.

  Ralph Waldo Folger peered down at Sara Duarte as she lay sleeping in her collapsible crib. To his relief, her breathing was steady and shal­low. The previous night she had cried out in her sleep, a terrible sound that brought all three Folgers running from their beds, afraid of what they might see. Sara did not even awaken with her shriek; whatever fear grazed her unconscious with dark wings f lapped on into oblivion.

  Ralph wondered about the memory of a two-year-old. Had Sara seen or heard something the night of Del’s death? Probably not. She would certainly have cried out and run to her mother’s side. And in that case, she would be dead.

  They had brought the child’s things to Tattle Court before the Duarte house was sealed, and Sara seemed to have adapted to her new surroundings happily enough. Del had died without appointing a guard­ian for her daughter; even now, Felix Harper was discussing the formal adoption process with Del’s New Bedford cousins.

  A sound in the doorway behind him; Merry. “She’s sleeping,” Ralph said in a gruff whisper, and backed out of the room in stockinged feet.

  “No more nightmares?”

  “Not yet.”

  Merry looked past him toward the crib, her black brows drawn down. “What’ll happen to her, Ralph?”

  “Felix is handling it.”

  “I’m not sure he should be.”

  “Now, Meredith—”

  “We’re the people who loved Del,” she said. “We should be taking care of her child. It’s what she’d have wanted.”

  “Her family loved her, too. Don’t discount that. Those cousins took her in three years ago, and stood by her.”

  “I guess,” she said, unconvinced. “But Sara’s so small, Ralph. She can’t say what she wants, so we decide her life for her. She may hate us someday.”

  “You’ve just pronounced the ancient law of parenting,” he said dryly. “Take it as cautionary advice. How’s the arson investigation?”