Death in Rough Water

by Francine Mathews

  “They do. This is a special meeting. To consider the future of the Town Pier. Something has to be done as soon as possible, and as Tom’s now f inance director—”

  “I see.”

  “He should be back in an hour or so, if you’d like to call round again.”

  There it was, “call round,” a carefully cultivated Anglicism. Wouldn’t Del laugh, Merry thought.

  She thanked the woman and left, making her way toward 16 Broad Street and the Town Building, past Steamboat Wharf, where a car ferry had just arrived. A f lood of early weekenders rolled off its gangplanks, cars packed to the gills, pedestrians pushing baby strollers and bikes, a huddled mass waiting impatiently at the taxi stand for one of the few vans circulating the island. The taxi problem was notorious; every sum­mer it grew worse. Merry had seen new arrivals actually come to blows over a place in a cab, and more than one driver had been accosted when he refused a fare.

  When she arrived at the Town Building’s conference room, it was to f ind the door barred and the sign closed meeting propped up on an easel.

  “Excuse me,” she said, walking back to the lobby receptionist, “is it the selectmen’s meeting that’s closed?”

  It was.

  “I had understood it concerned the fate of the Town Pier.”

  It did.

  “But isn’t that rather important? I mean, shouldn’t they call a special town meeting or something?”

  The receptionist looked at Merry coldly over her glasses and inquired whether she represented a news organization. Her temper f laring, Merry pulled out her badge and f lashed it at the woman.

  “The selectmen are merely considering preliminary proposals for the pier’s replacement, Detective . . . Folger,” the receptionist said icily, lifting her glasses to peer more closely at the badge. “Proposals do not concern the public. Once the pier becomes a budgetary matter, it will of course be under consideration as business for next spring’s town meeting.”

  “I thought the point was to get the reconstruction under way quickly.”

  “That is correct.”

  “So conceivably it could be done before the next town meeting?”

  “I could not undertake to say. That is a matter for the selectmen to consider.”

  Decidedly hush-hush. Too much that concerned the Town Pier was hush-hush. Merry thanked the receptionist, walked back down the hall, and pushed open the door marked ladies, all with exaggerated emphasis for the woman’s benef it. By the time she emerged, the receptionist was occupied by the telephone. Merry crept up to the conference-room door and crouched with one ear to the crack between the double doors.

  She was in luck. Tom Baldwin was speaking.

  “The Windy Harbor plan submitted by Oceanside Resorts is admirable in several respects,” he said. Strange how a familiar voice altered when detached from a face; instead of Tom’s avuncular heartiness, this voice sounded suave, persuasive, commanding. “It provides for multiuse facilities that will bring signif icant tax dollars to Nantucket and improve the shoreline along South Beach. A condominium complex with private moorage, a boat-servicing complex including a dockside restaurant, a shopping ar­cade providing goods to residents, a small, sixty-f ive-room hotel, and retail space for galleries, clothing stores, upscale food emporiums, light­ship basket shops—”

  Oceanside Resorts. Oceanside Resorts. She’d heard that somewhere. She groped for it in her mind, half listening to the conversation behind the door.

  “You still haven’t explained how you’re going to turn a piece of town property into private holdings.” This from Patrick Mayhew, a longtime Nantucket resident near the end of his tenure as a selectman. There was an audible sigh from his fellows.

  “It’ll be leased, Pat,” came one impatient voice. Jason Summerf ield, a recent transplant from Manhattan. “We’ll sign a long-term lease with Oceanside, oversee the construction and cleanup, and sit back while they take care of our problems.”

  Oceanside. Merry sat back on her heels as though she’d been sucker-punched. Small print at the lower left-hand corner of a blueprint sliding from a pile in Tom Baldwin’s off ice. Blueprints that looked pretty f inal only days after the f ire. Blueprints that must have been drafted months earlier.

  “Have you run this by the zoning off ice, Baldwin?”

  “Not yet. This is merely a preliminary sounding of the board—”

  “Well, I for one don’t like it,” Mayhew said testily. “We don’t need more building along the harbor. Those f ishermen’s shacks selling T-shirts and whatnot on Old South are eyesore enough. They serve a purpose, of course; they keep the day-trippers occupied and out of the upper end of town. But do we need more of that, I ask you?”

  “This is entirely different, Patrick,” Tom Baldwin said. “The plan un­der consideration is geared toward an aff luent clientele.”

  Upscale, Merry thought.

  “We’re talking condos with harbor views, starting at eight hundred thousand dollars. Eventually, perhaps, it could be extended to Old South and provide a welcome face-lift to the area.”

  “And what about all the seasonal boats coming in and out of the moorings? Fifteen hundred boats a summer.”

  “The moorings will be unchanged,” Baldwin said. “Oceanside will simply run them.”

  “And take the jobs from a few more Nantucketers.”

  “Why are you so opposed to a plan that admirably solves our prob­lems?”

  “Why are you so ready to embrace this Oceanside? What do we know about them, anyway? You’ve only been f inance director for a day and a half, and already you’re jumping up with a contract to f ill. Sure you’re not acting as their agent?”

  “Good God, Patrick, what are you suggesting?”

  “Patrick,” Jason Summerf ield broke in, “Tom is merely doing his job, and superlatively at that. He’s presented an option for solving a major headache. You mentioned f ifteen hundred boats mooring off South Beach. That’s an accurate number. Only they’re unable to moor off South Beach right now, and if we don’t move our tuckuses, they’re not going to come in all summer. The place is a wreck. We need action, we need improvement, we need a deal that’ll bring in more tourist dollars than the old pier ever did. And we need it yesterday, not next spring.”

  “Detective Folger,” said an icy voice behind Merry.

  She tried to leap to her feet, shamefaced, and discovered her legs had gone numb from the knee down. To sprawl in supplication about the an­kles of the lobby receptionist was the cherry on the sundae of her day.

  Merry took refuge in Congdon’s Pharmacy, blessedly air-conditioned and provided with a spare, neat 1950s lunch counter where real islanders ordered grilled cheese sandwiches and old-fashioned sodas. She had both, stirring her black-and-white desultorily with a straw, licking the foam from the bottom, and trying to f it Tom Baldwin into arson. She’d taken a moment to call Howie Seitz on her cell, and he’d found Oceanside Resorts halfway down the list of Plastech Explo­sives’ customers. Coincidence was not an option here.

  For her money, Patrick Mayhew had Tom Baldwin pegged. He was an agent for Oceanside, and he must have believed a bomb was the best door-opener to the South Beach property. There was the obvious tie, of course; it was Tom’s dinghy that had blown. The fact that he’d been miles away in Boston was irrelevant. He could have hired someone to destroy the pier, and allowed his own expensive yacht to go up in f lames in order to look more convincingly innocent. His boat had undoubtedly been insured—and maybe he was tired of it, anyway. But how to estab­lish his connection to the bomber? And what did the pier have to do with Jenny Baldwin’s prints showing up in Del’s house?

  That was the immediate problem. If Merry revealed how much she knew about Oceanside, Tom would run before any connection with Del was made.

  She sighed and pushed away the remains of her sandwich. Her head hurt. A su
re sign she was subconsciously working out the tangle. Deciding the best antidote for weariness was to ignore it, she paid her bill and headed back to Tom Baldwin’s off ices.

  The master builder was at leisure, Merry was told, and would be with her in just a few minutes. After perhaps half an hour with a magazine in her lap, she was ushered into his private sanctum.

  “Detective,” he said, not bothering to rise from behind his desk, “I understand the Nantucket police are now eavesdropping on the town government. Are things going completely to hell out there at the Rotary, or is your father just past his prime?”

  Hence the half-hour wait. She was intended to feel humbled. “I know you must be upset about your wife’s arrest,” she said, taking a chair he didn’t bother to offer.

  “Upset? I’m irate. The poor woman has done nothing to deserve such persecution. She came to you thinking she was coming to a friend. And she got a night in a jail cell. It’s something she won’t soon forget, I assure you.”

  “Tom, her f ingerprints were found in Del Duarte’s house.”

  “On a bottle she brought to Del,” he said dismissively.

  “There is also the bracelet.”

  “A few links of chain. Which no one can say is hers.”

  It was def initely possible Baldwin had framed his wife, Merry thought; nobody could be this dense about evidence unless he wanted to seem stupid. “What I’m trying to say, Tom, is that the bottle and the chain were deliberately left there to incriminate your wife. Del didn’t drink scotch. There were no other prints on the glasses. So whoever murdered Del wiped the highball glasses clean and left Jenny’s prints to be found on the bottle, along with the remains of her chain.”

  Tom grinned at her derisively. “Implicate my wife? Why would anyone do that?”

  “I don’t know. But it happened. And the killer must have known Jenny had no alibi. Who besides you and Josh were aware she was alone in bed that night?”

  “I suppose everybody at the Yacht Club knew it,” Tom said, thinking. “I told them why I showed up at Paul Harris’s party alone.”

  “Paul Harris?”

  “Old friend from Boston. Just got married for the second time. Cutest little thing you ever—” He stopped, realizing who he was talking to, and recovered. “There were about twenty or so people.”

  “When you arrived, or throughout the course of the evening?”

  “When I arrived. The invitation was for seven-thirty. I showed up a good f ifteen minutes later.”

  “And were some of the guests friends of yours and Jenny’s?”

  “Just about all of them.”

  “Any of them have a reason to kill Del and frame your wife for it?”

  “What the hell kind of question is that?”

  “The sort I’m forced to ask every day.”

  “No.”

  “Any of them leave early?”

  “What’s early?”

  “Before midnight, I suppose.”

  “Hell, yes. I was home myself by ten-thirty. I get up every morning at f ive.”

  “And Jenny was in fact in bed?”

  “Sound asleep,” he said dismissively.

  “Was your nephew home?”

  “Not yet. His crowd don’t call it quits until the wee hours.”

  “Did you have any reason to step out, Tom, during the party?”

  “Did I take a whiz, are you asking? I should think so. And no one came along to hold my hand.”

  “The bathroom wasn’t exactly what I had in mind.”

  “Are you accusing me of murdering Del Duarte and framing my wife?” At this, he f inally rose from behind the desk and leaned menacingly toward Merry. Tom was not a tall man—not much taller than herself—but he was bulky, his shoulders broadened by years of hard lifting and pounding. He was aware of his strength, she knew, and was consciously using it.

  “Should I be?” Merry asked.

  “You people don’t know when to stop.” His voice rose unpleasantly. “But the rest of us may do it for you. There’s more than one way to control a rogue elephant. You can trip it, you can trap it, or you can shoot it in the head.”

  “If by ‘the head’ you’re referring to my father, Tom, I’d be careful what you say. He has more friends than you do.”

  “We’ll see how many he has left when I’m through with him,” Tom said. “Now get out of my off ice, Meredith. And don’t come back.”

  Chapter 26

  If Thursday was bad, Friday morning looked positively awful. Bailey had stirred himself enough to collect fabric samples from the Baldwins’ closets, and Clarence was hard at work attempting to match f ibers. Merry had given Bailey her notes about Tom Baldwin, though she had little hope he’d grasp their signif icance. Bailey’s ineptitude sat in her gut like a bad clam—sickening, persistent, and ruining her day.

  So when the phone rang in her off ice and Peter’s warm, dark voice came over the line, Merry was frustrated enough to resent him wildly—merely for having a life independent of murder and fraud.

  “I’m pretty busy, Peter,” she said, doing her best to sound both ef­f icient and irritated.

  “I’m sure you are. I won’t ask you to dinner.”

  “Good. Can I do something for you?” There was the hint of a clock ticking behind every word.

  “I ran into Lisa Davis yesterday afternoon while I was out riding. She used to baby-sit for Georgiana at the Cliff Road house.”

  Training on his bike, of course. Running into the help, chatting over a rose-covered fence, enjoying the summer day without a care in the world beyond the betterment of his quadriceps.

  “Who’s Lisa Davis?”

  “You don’t know? I thought you’d have talked to her by now. Mitch Davis’s wife. Remember Mitch? Got a bullet through the head during that arson case you’re investigating?” Peter never sounded irritated him­self. His voice simply got quieter when he was angry.

  “I’m not heading that investigation. The state police are.”

  “What exactly is making you so busy, then?”

  “Cleaning up after everybody else,” she snapped. “All the work and none of the recognition, if you must know. What about Lisa Davis?”

  “She’s not doing too well, Merry. I thought you might drop by and talk to her.”

  “Because it takes a woman to understand another woman’s grief?”

  “No,” Peter said. His voice was almost inaudible. In another mood, Merry would have heard that as a warning. Today, fed up with the smug Baileys and the bike-riding Masons of the world, she didn’t care.

  “Because nobody seems to give her any information,” Peter contin­ued. “Whoever is handling it over at the state police has told her it was a random killing in the middle of a crisis, and that they doubt they’ll ever have a lead.”

  “Sometimes that’s the truth, Peter,” Merry said. “I’m certainly not going to second-guess the state police.”

  “What has gotten into you today, Meredith Folger? I’m trying to have a simple conversation here. About something I think matters. I’m asking for your help, and you’re biting my head off.”

  “I said I’m busy, Peter. I realize that’s something you can’t understand. Thanks for calling.” And she hung up.

  Merry studied the name Oceanside Resorts on the list of Plastech Explosives customers. She should give the information to Bill Carmichael over at the state police, though she would be unable to answer his ob­vious questions—why Oceanside, when she had no clear link between the company and a bomb, other than Tom Baldwin pushing their bid for the pier reconstruction, and Tom Baldwin’s boat blowing sky-high. It was too soon for the Massa­chusetts police to muscle their way into Oceanside’s doors; more of a case should be built. And despite herself, Merry admitted, she didn’t want the state disturbing Tom Baldwin’s complacency. She was cer
tain he was into something fraudulent up to his neck, and his wife’s f ingerprints had been found in Del’s house. If the state police rolled up his network pre­maturely, she might never f ind out why. She could explain all that to Bill Carmichael, of course, or at least let him know Lisa Davis’s concerns. But he’d already said Mitch’s wife was pestering him unmercifully, and knowing Bill, he was probably ignoring his cell phone.

  Mitch Davis. He’d been shot in the back of the head. Bill thought he’d walked away from an irate boater just as the guy pulled the gun out and f ired at him; but in the smoky dark, would an irate boater manage to hit the exact center of the base of the skull? The entrance wound had been rather precise, hadn’t it? And what about burn marks?

  Merry walked down the hall to Clarence’s off ice and knocked. He looked up from a report he was writing and smiled at her. “I’d love to be able to tell you that Dave Grizutti fellah’s prints are on the hahpoon,” he said, “but they’re not. Hairs are a match, howevah. He was def initely there.”

  “Never mind that,” she said. “Do you have your notes on Mitch Davis?”

  “Mitch Davis? O’ carse.” Clarence was scrupulously neat. Everything was labeled, everything sorted, everything f iled. He pulled open a desk drawer and reached into a mass of folders. “Here ’tis.”

  Her brows knitted, Merry studied the crime scene chief’s notes. Though the murder had been turned over to the state police, Clarence had obtained a copy of the crime lab’s autopsy report and appended it to his f ile. Mitch Davis had been shot in the center of the base of the skull by a .38 caliber pistol, at close range. He had the burn marks to prove it.

  An execution, Merry thought. Bill Carmichael must have recognized it. So why wasn’t he doing anything about it? She f lipped the f ile shut. Peter was right. She should talk to Lisa Davis.

  The Davises owned a neat new Cape Cod off Bartlett Road. This was the southwestern end of the island, abutting Bart­lett Farm’s acres of produce, the Ram Pasture conservation area, and even­tually, down Hummock Pond Road, Cisco Beach.