by James Hayman
Maggie waited for the explanation.
“You’re familiar with her rich husband?”
“You’ve mentioned him. Peter Ingram, right?”
“Yeah, Peter Ingram. Well, Mr. Ingram left for London on business last Sunday night. Sandy was going to be on her own for ten days. Sandy hates being alone. She needs amusement, and she needs an audience. I guess she thought the graduation would provide both. But then she got a better offer. Turns out Ingram’s been invited for the weekend to the la-di-da country estate of Lord somebody or other who asked if”—McCabe put on a faux British accent—“ ‘any chance, old man, your wife could join us?’ Obviously a bit part in Downton Abbey appealed to Sandy more than the title role in Mother of the Grad. So off she went.”
McCabe finished the Scotch. Caught Max’s eye. Ordered another.
“You sure you want that?”
“Yeah, I’m sure. Just carrying on a McCabe family tradition. My old man was a drunk and his old man before him. I’d hate to let the team down.”
Max brought the second glass.
“You’re not a drunk.”
McCabe smiled bitterly. “Kyra might give you an argument on that.” He raised the glass and toasted Maggie.
“You’re not a drunk,” she said softly, reaching out to take his free hand in hers.
“Thank you,” he said, squeezing back. “I don’t think so either.”
“You just,” she sighed in frustration, “I don’t know . . . drink too much sometimes. Mostly when you’re hurting.”
“I guess that’s one way of putting it.” McCabe smiled and let go of her hand. One of the things he liked best about Maggie was her need to defend him. Even against himself. His mother had been that way with his father. On the other hand, maybe it was because Mag had once saved his life, putting a bullet in a bad guy’s head nanoseconds before the guy would’ve cut McCabe’s throat from ear to ear. Maybe, like the Chinese, she felt saving his life made her responsible for it forever.
“There’s more going on than just Sandy not coming to the graduation, isn’t there?”
“Yes and no.” McCabe leaned back. The booze was kicking in, and he felt more relaxed. “I guess what’s really bugging me is that here’s this shallow woman who would rather fly fourteen hours round trip to spend a weekend with people she’s never met than go to her only daughter’s high school graduation. Yet, in spite of that uncaring attitude, she’s nevertheless paying Casey’s entire way through Brown University. More than 60K a year. A quarter of a million over four years.”
Maggie looked at him questioningly. “And that bugs you because?”
“Because I’m Casey’s only real parent. Not Sandy and sure as hell not Ingram, who barely knows her. It’s my job to pay my daughter’s way through college, but unfortunately I can’t afford it. And because of that Sandy’s trying to stick it to me like she always has. Prove once again I’m nothing but a lowly cop. In her mind a complete failure who can’t even scrape together enough money to pay for his own kid’s college education.”
Maggie gave him the look she always used before telling him he was being an asshole. But she surprised him. Instead she asked, “What about applying for financial aid? Student loans? Surely, as a lowly cop and a complete failure, you’d qualify.”
McCabe sighed. “We tried. Turns out not to be an option. Not when the applicant’s mother is married to Peter Ingram, who, apparently, has just donated what he calls three bucks to found Brown’s Peter A. Ingram School of Management.”
Maggie looked puzzled. “Three bucks?”
“Rich people lingo for three million. The lady at Brown implied giving Casey money would be like giving financial aid to Warren Buffett’s kid.”
“Well, pardon me for saying so, but I think maybe it’s time you swallowed your macho pride, accepted the money and just said ‘Thank you.’ In spite of everything, Sandy’s still Casey’s mother.”
“I already did that. Months ago. Still, the whole thing sticks in my craw. Casey even picked up on it, though I’d never said a word to her.”
“How do you know?”
“She chimed up one day and said she didn’t think she wanted to go to Brown. Said she’d prefer U. Maine, Orono. Which, by the way, I’m not sure I could afford either.”
“Orono’s a good school. I know. I went there.”
“I know you did and yes, it is. But Casey’s earned her way into Brown. One of the toughest schools in the country to get into. I don’t want my hang-ups to be the cause of her missing something I know she wants. So I told her Orono wasn’t an option.”
Maggie studied McCabe in silence. “What does Kyra think about all this?” she finally asked.
McCabe smiled. A thin bitter smile. “These days she thinks I’m an asshole pretty much all around.”
“What do you mean?”
“Kyra left me. Nearly two months ago. She didn’t want to hang around with a cop either.”
Maggie signaled Max and asked her to bring her a beer. A Geary’s HSA. She had a feeling that this was going to be a long afternoon.
Chapter 4
Whitby Island, Maine
June 1904
WHAT AIMÉE HATED most about dying was that she would never see her children grow up. Never see them fall in love. Or marry and have children of their own. Charlotte, the eldest, at eight. So bright and bossy. Always telling the others what to do. Always in charge. Like her father in that regard. Young Teddy, rambunctious and noisy at five. And the baby, Annabelle, not yet three, named for Aimée’s English mother.
The children’s lovely pink faces floated above her. They seemed so close, so clear. She reached out a hand and stroked Teddy’s cheek. Felt its softness against her palm. Teddy. The one she loved most of all though she could never breathe a word of it. Not to Edward or anyone else. But Teddy had always been her favorite. So full of life. So eager. So naughty. So beautiful. There was nothing of Edward in his face. It was all a boyish version of her own. Teddy smiled down at her. “Bonjour, Maman,” he said in his sweet soprano. She reached up to pull him closer, but as suddenly as he had appeared, he was gone. She felt tears warming the coldness of her cheek at the thought of never seeing Teddy or the girls again. Never seeing them grow up was too awful to bear. Still, it would be so easy now to simply succumb to the pull of night.
Through the spreading veil of darkness, she heard the crows circling above her again. Quite close now. They must have sensed her time was growing short. “Be patient mes amis,” she whispered through drying lips. “Luncheon will be served quite soon.”
She saw the children again, walking away from her across a field filled with yellow flowers. A woman Aimée didn’t recognize held Teddy and little Annabelle’s hands on either side. Who was this woman leading her children away? A maid? No. Not a maid. Edward’s next wife? Perhaps. Charlotte, in a gauzy white dress and a brimmed straw hat, skipped ahead of the others. Suddenly Teddy wrenched his hand from the woman’s. He turned and began running back toward Aimée.
“Maman, Maman,” he shrieked through his tears. “Maman, no! Don’t go! Please don’t go!”
Aimée opened her arms and waited for Teddy to leap into them. Bury himself against her bosom and fill her face with kisses.
The woman was on him in a flash. Catching him. Lifting him. “You are never to do that again,” she scolded. “You will get lost and die.”
Teddy reached one arm toward Aimée. “Maman, Maman,” he cried, “please come back!”
“Your mother is dead,” the woman said in a voice too harsh for such a message. “She’s never coming back!”
Aimée wanted desperately to rise and run after them. But her legs wouldn’t move, and the harder she tried, the farther away the children seemed to be. Finally, all of them, her three children and the woman who was taking them from her, were nothing but specks on a dark horizon. And then not even specks. The field of yellow flowers faded.
THE SOUND OF men’s voices roused Aimée from her reveri
e. They seemed to be real, not just a dream, and were coming from the ocean.
She opened one eye and saw the dim outline of a fishing boat. Of course. St. Peter the fisherman, who, in the words of the Negro spiritual, must be “Comin’ for to carry me home.”
Or maybe it was Jesus Himself come to take her in his arms and carry her to heaven. Then there was another voice, younger than the others. A voice only beginning to change to manhood.
“See. Over there!” the boy shouted. The excitement in his cries brought Aimée back to the moment. “By that craggy bit to the left.”
“I don’t see anything.” An older voice. Hoarse and guttural. Both man and boy spoke in that peculiar clipped Maine accent that had become familiar to Aimée.
“It’s a woman,” the young one shouted. “Holy Jesus! She ain’t got no clothes on. Nekked as the day she was born! And there’s blood on her body!”
“A naked woman?” a third voice chimed in, laughing, as if he thought that was funny. “Sure she don’t have seaweed for hair? And maybe a large scaley tail instead of legs?”
“Don’t joke me, Harry. She’s real. Look! Right over there!”
“I see her too,” said the older man. He sounded grim.
For what seemed a long time, no one spoke. There was only the sound of the sea and the cawing of the crows.
Finally, the old voice said, “All right, one thing’s clear. She needs help. That is if she’s not already dead.”
“Fallen from the cliff, d’ya think, Dad?” asked the one called Harry.
“Look up to the top,” said the father. “There’s a man at the top. He’s leaning over. Looking down.”
“Why don’t he climb down to help her?” said Harry. “Maybe he meant to kill her.”
“You mean he pushed her off the cliff?” asked the younger boy.
“I don’t know,” said the older man. “The Whitbys don’t take kindly to strangers. Never have. But I wouldn’t have thought they’d have murdered one.”
“We have to go in and help,” said the boy.
“Damned if I can get any closer,” said the old man. “Not in this sea. Those rocks will knock us to pieces.”
“I’ll go in the dinghy,” said Harry. “Jack’s right. We can’t let her die.”
There was a silence.
“She’ll die if we don’t,” Harry said again.
“She may be dead already.”
“No,” said Harry, “she’s alive. I just saw her move.”
“You’re lying.”
“I just saw her move,” Harry insisted
Above, Aimée heard a flapping of wings. A flutter near her face. A pair of sharp talons pushed into her leg. A beak dug in and tore a piece of flesh from the opening. She tried to scream, but no sound would come. Within seconds she felt another peck. And then another. In a moment birds were all over her. Only death would bring relief. She longed for it to take her quickly.
A rifle shot rang out. Its echoes reverberated against the crevices of the cliff wall. The murder of crows retreated. A second shot followed.
“Bastards,” said the old man. “I’ll not have those damned birds feeding on a Christian woman. Dead or alive.”
That seemed funny. Aimée hadn’t been a Christian woman for years. Not since she was a child. Perhaps this fisherman really was St. Peter, even if he had a rifle and sounded like a Mainer.
“Then let us go in,” said Harry. “We’ll get her.”
After a minute the old man said, “All right, son. Take the dinghy. Young Jack, you go with him. Tie lines around yourselves so I can haul you back if you run into trouble. When you get there, signal if she’s alive. If she is, try to get her into the dinghy. If she’s dead, I’ll leave you to keep the birds away and head for help. But, for God’s sake, be careful. I’d hate to lose both my sons trying to recover the body of one dead woman. Could be a damned Whitby woman at that.”
Aimée felt a glimmer of hope as she waited for the two sons, Harry and Jack, to arrive.
Another shot rang out, followed again by the flutter and cries of retreating crows. She wondered how many bullets the fisherman had. Didn’t really matter. Crows were smart. The sound of shots wouldn’t frighten them for long unless one or more of them was hit. A difficult task with a rifle even if the man had a very good eye. She wished the boys would hurry.
Aimée’s eyes opened. The light seemed dimmer. The air colder. Perhaps it was night. She didn’t know. She felt her body growing weaker. She closed them again.
After what seemed an eternity, she heard the scraping of a small boat being pulled up onto the beach. Heavy boots crunching the stones, coming closer.
“I think she’s dead,” said young Jack.
“Sure as hell lying still as death.”
Aimée wanted desperately to tell them she was not dead. But no sound would come from her mouth.
“Not just dead, Jack,” said the one called Harry. “This woman was murdered.”
“Murdered?”
“Damned right. Look at these cuts. This straight one here to the left of her middle. That wasn’t made by her falling off any rocks. It’s a gut wound made by a knife. And look here. See that? The letter A carved into her chest.”
Hearing Harry’s words, the horror of what had happened today on the island, first at the studio and then at the cliff, came flooding back into Aimée’s memory.
“A?” asked Jack. “What do you suppose A stands for?”
“Beats me. Maybe her name starts with an A.”
Aimée concentrated as hard as she could on moving something. A finger. A lip. Anything that would convince them she was still alive. At last, with the greatest of effort, an eyelid fluttered.
“She’s not dead,” said Jack.
“She’s dead.”
“She’s not. I saw her eye move.” The boy went down on his knees and put his ear to her chest. “I don’t know. Maybe she is dead. No, wait. I can feel her heart beating.”
He put his ear to her lips. “She’s still breathing. We have to take her back.”
Four strong hands lifted and carried Aimée to the dingy. They gently lowered her into a puddle of freezing water. And then pushed off.
“Christ, if she survives this it’ll be a damn miracle.”
Yes, it would, she thought. A damn miracle indeed.
She could feel the waves pushing them back toward the cliff, but somehow the boys managed to get themselves up and over the breakers without damage.
She felt the dinghy banging against the side of the larger craft. Perhaps she would live after all.
“Here, slip her into the net.” The older man was speaking again. “And you, Jack, you climb up here and help me haul her in. Hell, she don’t look no heavier than a big cod anyway.”
Aimée felt herself swinging for a moment in the air. Then she was lifted up and over the gunwale and lowered onto the deck of the rocking craft.
“Here. Wrap her in this.”
She felt rough wool encase her body.
“All right, let’s get her the hell back to port. With any luck, we’ll run into the police boat and pass her on to them.”
The rolling of the waves slowed. The boat moved.
She felt the boy’s ear press gently against her lips. His cheeks were smooth, like a child’s. Like Teddy’s.
She mouthed a single word. But it was barely a whisper.
Still, the boy must have heard it. He looked up.
“What did she say?” asked his brother.
“Dunno. Couldn’t quite make it out. Sounded like . . .”
AIMÉE NEVER LEARNED if the boy called Jack had correctly heard the name she’d whispered, because before he could tell his brother what it sounded like, darkness fell all around her. And Aimée Marie Garnier Whitby, of Paris, Provence and Portland, Maine, in her twenty-eighth year, slipped into death as quietly and smoothly as she might have slipped into the depths of the ocean.
Chapter 5
PENFIELD ACADEMY’S NEWLY mint
ed valedictorian walked to the lectern. She waited, scanning the audience, smiling warmly, until the applause died down. With the exception of a few toddlers squirming in their parents’ arms, every eye was focused on her. Aimée experienced a shiver of excitement.
Her eyes went to the faculty seating area. Sought and found Byron Knowles. Her AP English teacher was a married poet with languid looks and a perpetual two-day growth of beard. Byron, or as she so often teased him, Lord Byron, looked back. His smile communicated nothing more than a teacher taking pride in the achievements of his star pupil. But Aimée knew there was more to it than that. She remembered the two of them sitting naked in bed just days ago, eating ripe peaches and reading erotic poetry to each other. Dripping peach juice both on the sheets and on their bodies. Then grabbing each other and licking it off. Delicious.
A few of her closest friends knew she was involved with someone, but she hadn’t offered even a hint as to who it might be. Not even to Julia, with whom Aimée shared most things. Keeping the secret made the affair seem dark, romantic, illicit. Which was, for Aimée at least, part of its charm. But there was also the near certainty Byron would be fired, his career ruined, if their secret came out. That seemed dreadfully unfair to Aimée, since it was she who’d started the whole thing.
The applause continued, and Aimée delighted in it. All these people focusing only on her. Then, with perfect timing, she held up a hand to quiet things down. “Thank you all,” she said. “Thank you all so very much.”
When there was silence, Aimée began to speak. She didn’t need a script or even notes. She’d worked hard, endlessly rehearsing every word, every gesture, every pause. As she did with everything else in her life, Aimée wanted the speech to be perfect. “Headmaster Cobb,” she began, “trustees, faculty members, family, friends and fellow graduates, today is a day for those of us leaving Penfield to reflect on and be thankful for all we have been given.” As her words tumbled out flawlessly, Aimée scanned the audience. For the first time, she spotted her mother, Tracy Carlin, seated way in the back on the aisle. Typical. As the Press Herald’s top crime reporter, Tracy’s mantra had always been to sit as close to the exit as she could in case of a breaking news story.