by Rice, Luanne
“He wanted it for his daughter,” Dan said.
Joe Holmes nodded. Dan's palms were sweating; he started working again, to keep himself occupied. He had notched the dinghy's frames, so while the breast hook's epoxy dried, he began setting the inwales flush with the frame's face and sheer, half turned away from the agent.
“Did he seem like a family man to you?” Joe asked.
“I didn't know him well,” Dan said. “So I don't know.”
“But commissioning a boat for his daughter would tend to tell you something, right?”
“I guess so,” Dan said, concentrating on the boat to avoid getting into that question. The smell of sawdust and epoxy was strong, and Dan could hear his own heart thumping in his ears.
“Mrs. McCabe told me she's an old friend of yours.”
At that, Dan looked up and nodded. Okay, good, he thought. Bay has already talked to him.
“Known each other a long time?” Holmes asked.
“We knew each other a long time ago,” Dan said. “But then we both went our separate ways and didn't speak again till this summer.”
“Before her husband died.”
“No,” he said. “After.”
“And Sean McCabe knew of your friendship? Or was he, perhaps, an old friend, too?”
“I didn't know Sean well,” Dan said. “He grew up at the same beach as Bay, and I remember seeing him around. But that's about it.”
“Then it's quite a coincidence, isn't it, that Sean McCabe would walk in here,” the agent said. “Not knowing you used to know his wife.”
Dan let that pass. “The reason I called the local police,” he said, “is that a woman called here asking about Sean McCabe.”
Joe Holmes raised his eyebrows.
“When?”
“A few weeks ago. Late August.”
“What did she say, exactly?”
“She asked me if Sean had been here; if I'd spoken to him.”
“Did she say what she was looking for?”
“No. It was very brief. I thought she might call back, but she hasn't so far.” His heart was pounding hard, just from being in the middle of an investigation; good thing he hadn't done anything really wrong. “What do you think she wanted?”
The agent stood tall, hands clasped behind his back. He was gazing at Dan, as if he wanted to read his mind. “Hard to say,” he said. “The man had a lot going on.”
“McCabe did know that his wife and I used to be friends,” he said. “Bay told me he read some letters we wrote to each other.”
“I know,” Holmes said. “I have them.”
“Bay gave them to you?”
“These are photocopies, and they were in Sean's possession.”
Bay didn't know this, Dan was sure. She'd been worried about holding out on the FBI over something as sweet and innocent as their old letters, when Holmes knew of them the whole time.
“Do you know why Sean McCabe would have photocopied your letters?” Holmes asked.
“I can't imagine,” Dan said, his heart pounding.
Dan thought back to what he'd written Bay so long ago. He hardly remembered, but he knew it had to do with their shared feelings about nature, the beach, the simple things they both loved. So different from Sean. Dan had started wondering whether Sean had mined those letters for ways to get a hook into him. But he wasn't about to volunteer that.
“You had written to his future wife, and she to you,” Holmes said. “Maybe he was jealous.”
“I haven't seen the letters in twenty-five years, but I remember the tone. She was just a kid, and I was just out of college, and there was nothing but friendship between us. I remember writing about the boardwalk, and a swing I made her . . . the moon. Some stuff about her thumb, which she had hurt helping me. Jellyfish, crabs, and seagulls, and all that beach stuff.”
“So, if he wasn't jealous . . .” Holmes said.
“Then I don't know. A long time ago,” Dan said, squinting with anger and impatience as he thought of Sean McCabe, realizing that he had been set up. Sean had known exactly what he was doing. “Look, I have work to do.”
“I know. I'm sorry. Just a few more questions,” Agent Holmes said.
Dan was sweating as he turned back to the dinghy. He had notched the inboard short frames over the seam batten, rounding their ends, and he now began screwing them in, through the planking from outboard and through the inwale from inboard. He was on autopilot, glad to have something to do with his hands.
“Did you have any accounts at Shoreline Bank?”
“Did I? No,” Dan said. Here it comes.
“So, Sean McCabe didn't handle any of your money?”
“My wife's family had accounts and a trust at Shoreline.”
“A trust?”
“For my daughter, yes.”
“And are you trustee of that trust?”
“Now I am. I took over for my wife. She died just over a year ago.”
“Ah,” Holmes said. “I'm sorry. And who is the other trustee?”
“Mark Boland,” Dan said, telling the truth. “All correspondence comes from his office.”
“Do you know Ralph, or ‘Red,' Benjamin?”
“He's in-house counsel for Shoreline Bank, isn't he?” Dan asked.
“Yes.”
This was a big, stupid chess game, Dan thought. He just wanted to get it over, get back to work. Things that were totally innocent could be made to look questionable; his encounters with Sean had taught him that.
“How's business?” Holmes asked.
“Fine,” Dan said, looking up.
“There's been a downturn in the economy. People still have money for pretty wooden boats?”
“They seem to,” Dan said.
“How about twelve, thirteen months ago? How were things back then?”
Where's he going with this? Dan wondered, even as he answered, “Fine. I made it through. And as you can see, I'm still in business.”
“Good. Glad to hear it,” Holmes said. “Well, thanks for your time. Here's my card—call me if you think of anything else.”
“I will,” Dan said, glancing at the agent's card, propped up on the small boat's bow. He extended his hand, then pulled it back and shrugged apologetically—his fingers were stained with flecks of dried epoxy and varnish.
He returned to work, carefully avoiding lifting his head to watch the agent leave. His hands were shaking. There was something about a stranger asking personal questions that made Dan really want to get into one of the boats he built and go out sailing. He was like Bay; he liked his life to be simple and private.
Finally he heard the agent's engine start up, clamshells crunching under tires as the car drove through the parking lot. After a few moments, the boatyard was silent again. Well, not silent—never silent. The sounds of power tools, boat engines, seagulls crying overhead, the train coming into New London, the bells of the crossing gates.
And his own blood, pounding in his ears. Somehow, without doing anything, he had gotten into the middle of a drama he wanted no part of.
JOE HOLMES PULLED OUT OF THE ELIZA DAY BOAT BUILDERS yard with a strange feeling in his gut. It told him to pull over and look in his rearview mirror. He stopped in front of Chirpy Chicken, on Bank Street. This was really the neighborhood. Two nights ago, cruising the boatyard for inspiration, law-enforcement style, he had been captivated by the action on Bank Street.
To call it “seedy” would not do it justice. Riot lights bathed the scene in a warm orange glow. A couple of drug transactions here, a pair of hookers on the street corner there, a store with alluringly blacked-out windows and the sign “Book and Mag” over the door.
On the other hand, the quarter had a true, undeniably maritime and literary air about it. Joe could easily imagine Eugene O'Neill soaking it all up, the absinthe and morphine, the human suffering and boundless longing of the human heart: the stuff of literature and FBI investigations.
There was the stately and solid granite
Custom House, the oldest in the nation; the row of brick buildings and clapboard houses; the cozy brick bookstore/coffeehouse; the vest-pocket restaurants; the saloons—places Joe wouldn't mind raising a few—good drinking establishments called the Roadhouse and the Y-Knot.
The salt air blew off the Atlantic, through the Race—that rough, wild body of water where the Atlantic Ocean met Long Island Sound, up the Thames River. Joe could see Ledge Light, the square brick lighthouse set at the mouth of the river, and he could see Pfizer and its smokestacks and labs and offices across the river, along with Electric Boat, with its nuclear subs.
Trains plied the waterfront, arriving from and departing to Boston and New York, and ferries crossed the Sound, so that there was an almost constant cacophony of whistles and grinding machinery and horns and bells, the sounds of journey-making, a mixed message of joy and urgency and the sorrows of leave-taking.
Joe's investigations had taken him to many small cities over the years, but he'd never been so captivated as he was by New London. There was so much yearning here. These streets were soaked with blood, beer, whale oil, and desire.
The Ancient Burial Place, the Huguenot House; State Street, anchored at the bottom by Union Station, H. H. Richardson's cavernous redbrick landmark, and at the hilltop by the elegant 1784 courthouse, all wood, white clapboard, and black shutters, and immense and too graceful to have been the site of murder trials.
Joe liked New London. He liked the shoreline in general. Any place that had Tara O'Toole living on it was okay with him. The high point of this investigation had been running into Tara at Andy's Records.
He liked Bay McCabe as well. They were best friends, lucky to have each other. Tara was a character: tough cookie/protective friend on the outside; soft, loyal, vulnerable heart on the inside. Joe knew the type. Knew it all too well. He lived in Southerly, when he wasn't chasing down bank fraud in Black Hall, but he found himself envying Dan Connolly, even as he sat in his car watching in his rearview mirror.
The guy had a good life—or appeared to. On the other hand, so had Sean McCabe. They had both, at different times, enjoyed the affections of Bay. Did Dan know she'd been in love with him? Anyone reading the letters could tell.
Joe's investigation had turned up improprieties in the Shoreline trust department as well as the loan operation. The corpus of two trusts had been invaded, resulting in combined losses of over five hundred thousand dollars. While combing bank records, tracking down the theft, however, Joe had come upon another trust, the Eliza Day trust.
Established eighty years ago by Obadiah Day, it had passed first to his wife, Eliza, and then to his daughter—Dan Connolly's wife, Charlotte—and now to his granddaughter, young Eliza. The trust contained nine million dollars.
Interest was paid quarterly; until her accident, Charlotte had been one of two trustees. The other had been Sean McCabe. Connolly was right; Mark Boland was now a trustee. But he had taken over only after McCabe's death. Daniel Connelly had taken over after Charlotte's accident. Why hadn't he mentioned that Sean had been a trustee until his death in June?
What, if anything, did he have to do with the juggling of funds that had taken place thirteen months ago?
Just around the time of his wife's death.
The investigation of Sean McCabe's crime had opened a deep cavern at Shoreline Bank. Joe was looking for an UNSUB—an unidentified subject. He wasn't sure who or why or how that person had aided McCabe, or even for sure if such a person existed.
All he knew was that there had been misappropriation of funds in two departments: the loan division and the trust division.
And although the money had been quickly paid back, the Eliza Day trust had been pilfered and restored—the records proved it.
Bob Dylan's Oh Mercy had been playing on Joe's CD player; inspired by Dan's shirt, he popped it out and inserted Springsteen's The Rising in its place. He waited, and watched, feeling the music.
And then his wait became worth its while: Dan Connolly was on the move.
He exited the boat shed, pulled the heavy doors shut, and locked them. He walked across the parking lot and climbed into his truck. As Joe watched, Dan pulled out onto the street, drove straight past Joe's car, and headed west on the Shore Road.
He lived east, across the Gold Star Bridge, in Mystic, so Joe took a wild guess about Dan's destination. He didn't really have any reason for thinking Dan might want to go there; it was more of a gut feeling, an instinct. Perhaps because if he were Dan, that is where Joe would want to go.
The ride took about twenty minutes.
There was very little traffic. With summer over, the crowds had gone. Route 156 was almost empty, except for a slowdown by the grocery stores in Waterford and Silver Bay. Then a straight shot past the Lovecraft Wildlife Refuge and Rocky Neck State Park, past the Wellsweep and the Fireside Restaurant. Connolly turned left under the train trestle—the same tracks that went to New London, past his boatyard—into Hubbard's Point.
He drove past Bay's house, then Tara's, into the beach parking lot. It was September now, and the lot was empty. Joe stopped on the side of the road, just around the corner. He got out of the car and walked through an empty yard to watch.
Dan Connolly was out of his truck, walking across the footbridge that led onto the beach. Hair blowing in the wind, he strode onto the boardwalk, as Joe had known he would.
Although he had a pair of small binoculars in his jacket pocket, Joe just watched Connolly with his naked eyes, from across the yard and sandy lot. He saw the man glance down, as if to remind himself he had built that boardwalk himself, over two decades earlier.
And then he sat down on the white bench, the long empty white bench where so many people must have taken rest and solace over the years. His head was turned slightly, looking west, directly at Bay's house. He was thinking of her, Joe was sure; and he was also listening to the sounds of the waves and gulls.
Two staples of the sea, inseparable from summers at Hubbard's Point or any other beach; a reminder of summers and youth.
And innocence gone by.
20
SEPTEMBER WAS CLEAR AND BRIGHT, FILLED WITH golden light as summer slid into autumn, and then it was October, and the air grew cooler, but the water stayed warm enough to swim, and the light turned amber. Like the actual substance of amber, having captured for eternity ancient life, leaves and bees and crickets, the October light of Hubbard's Point was forever filled with preserved memories of summer.
Bay worked hard at Augusta's, mulching, pruning, planting bulbs on Firefly Hill. And then, as if inspired by the promise of beauty in the coming spring, she'd rush home before dark and do the same thing to her own yard.
It gave her hope and comfort to know that these hard, dry bulbs inserted deep into the rocky hillside soil now would yield clouds of snowdrops, scillas, daffodils, narcissus, and tulips, come April and May.
At night, Bay and Tara often met for tea by the fire, always at Bay's, where they could keep an eye on the children doing their homework. Bay had been completely wrapped up in work for the first time since her marriage, and in helping the kids cope with returning to school after their father's death.
“October is actually my favorite time to sail,” Tara said, bundled in a shawl. It was a warm evening, so the two friends were sitting outside, under the moon. “The breeze is more steady, and the water's warm, so if you capsize, it's a nice swim home.”
“That would be nice,” Bay said, smiling as she sipped her tea, wishing Dan were there to see the moon with her. “So nice . . .”
“Why don't you call and invite yourself again?”
“I can't.”
“It's because you don't think it's seemly, right? How dare you go sailing again with someone who likes you?”
“It was so good, just to be out on the water with him,” Bay said. “I'd forgotten it could be like that. He's so gentle.”
“You deserve gentle, Bay.”
“Sean was always so fast and busy, so
high-gear . . . it was wonderful to just sail along in an old catboat, not trying to get anywhere fast.”
“He's a good friend,” Tara said. “I remember how much time you used to spend with him—I hardly saw you that summer. You enjoyed each other's company even then, when you were just a kid.”
“I know,” Bay said, glowing with the thought of that moonrise. “It really was an amazing friendship.”
“And still is? Why don't you invite him over for dinner some night?”
Bay had been thinking the same thing. Annie had been hounding her to see Eliza, and Bay had said she could soon.
They stared across the marsh, to the craggy tree-covered hillside. It was dark and mysterious, silvered by moonlight, just a hint of the path leading into the woods, to Little Beach. Bay thought of the adventure, the trail of life, and wondered where it would lead them all next.
“Want to join us for dinner Saturday?” she asked Tara.
Tara smiled, shaking her head. “No, thank you. I think Andy's having a sale that starts that day. I might stop in there.”
“You want to see Joe Holmes, don't you?” Bay said.
“I feel so disloyal,” Tara said. “Considering he's investigating Sean.”
“You really are tired of artists, aren't you?”
“Exhausted, darling,” Tara said. “You have no idea.”
Laughing, Bay heard a car pull into the driveway. She got up, just in time to see Alise Boland coming around the corner of the house carrying a huge pot of orange chrysanthemums.
“I know it's late,” Alise said, setting the pot down on the back step. “I should have called first, but I've just finished the craziest job, and I had some leftover mums, and I wanted to give you some!”
“Thank you—that's so nice of you,” Bay said. “Would you like some tea?”
“Yes, join us,” Tara said.
Alise shook her head. “Thanks, I'd love to another time. But you know how it is—I've been working all day, and I just want to get home and take a shower.”