The Perfect Summer (Hubbard's Point)

by Rice, Luanne

  “Steady there,” Tara said, supporting her as she finished untangling the cloth. Augusta felt as dizzy as a child who had been spun around too many times in Pin-the-Tail-on-the-Donkey.

  “My Lord,” Augusta said, plopping down onto the faded chintz chaise longue in the corner of her dressing room. “I loathe the feeling of being trapped . . . a prisoner . . .”

  “In blue taffeta,” Tara said, a smile in her voice.

  Augusta sighed. Her children had always thought her frivolous—constantly getting ready for the next party, preparing a costume for another ball, needlepointing yet more throw pillows—and now Tara was conveying the same emotion.

  “Life isn't all costume parties,” Augusta said. “I do try to do good works.”

  “You gave Bay a chance,” Tara said. “And she loves her job.”

  “Well, she is enormously gifted. I watch her out the window, you know,” Augusta said. “She handles the soil and plants in such a way . . . the earth is her canvas. Believe me, I know an artist when I see one. I adore watching artists at work, when they are in their element and in touch with their muse. I can't wait to see her canvas come to life, into bloom, next spring.”

  Tara nodded, pleased and proud of her friend.

  “How is Bay faring?” Augusta asked, after a moment. “Emotionally and financially?”

  “She's strong,” Tara said. And that was all she said.

  Augusta admired her restraint. Loyalty to friends was paramount; she had always taught that to her daughters. Loyalty and love.

  Augusta had learned so much about love over the years. She had once thought that it belonged only between a man and a woman, that romantic love was the real love, that all else was secondary. She had hated deeply, as well. The women who had slept with her husband, the man who had invaded her kitchen so many years ago with his gun and a desire to kill.

  Her children, her brilliant and wonderful daughters, had taught her to forgive. To forgive everyone, and to love them. Wasn't that the point of life? To transcend your own suffering and try to love and give to others?

  Augusta sighed. Such deep thoughts exhausted her. She must be making progress as a human being, though. Thinking of Bay and her family instead of her Pumpkin Ball costume.

  But all good, saintly things had to come to an end, so Augusta took a deep breath and stood. Again, she began draping herself with the fabric. With the theme “Witchcraft” and her stature as Hugh Renwick's widow, Augusta planned to dress as a witch in a famous painting.

  Should it be from “Witches Flying,” by Francisco Goya? Or “Four Witches” by Albrecht Dürer—a particular favorite, hanging at the Met in New York, and it might be such fun to raise eyebrows by going nude! Or—and for shock value and fun, Augusta was leaning in this direction—“The Obscene Kiss” from Compendium Maleficarum by Fra Francisco Maria Guazzo of Milan?

  “Tara, what are you wearing to the Pumpkin Ball?”

  “I'm not sure I'm going,” Tara said, diligently refolding Augusta's cashmere sweaters in her sweater drawer.

  “Perhaps you should invite Agent Holmes.” At Tara's look of surprise, she said, “Oh, yes. I've picked up on your feelings. He is one to turn a woman's head.”

  “He's turned mine, but I'm not turning his.”

  “Darling, I'm sure you are. But he's worried about conflicts of interest. Or the appearance of impropriety. Why not just come out and tell him that the Pumpkin Ball will be a grand place to encounter all Black Hall's white-collar criminals? You can be his Mata Hari and help him to go undercover.”

  “I'll think about it.”

  “Well, you must attend the ball even without him,” Augusta said. “You are young, vibrant, and single. And you should take Bay with you. There's a lot of pressure in this town to become a professional widow—believe me, I know. But she should go anyway.”

  “Sean's only been dead for five months,” Tara said. “I don't think she'll want to.”

  Again, Augusta sighed. If only she could impart to these young women that life was terribly attenuated. Too short, too short. One never knew whether another Pumpkin Ball would even come to pass. It always took place on the night of the November Full Moon, just before Thanksgiving, and while it was often devastatingly romantic, the point had always been to celebrate life's harvest.

  “She should attend,” Augusta said firmly. “And you should get her there.”

  Tara laughed, dusting Augusta's shoes. “The last time I tried to meddle in her well-being, I nearly lost her friendship. And yours.”

  “Well. Look how it all turned out: She's happy, I'm happy. My garden is going to be an earthly delight. Oh!” Augusta said, shocked by the brilliance of her own subconscious.

  “What is it, Augusta?”

  “That's it! Hieronymus Bosch—‘The Garden of Earthly Delights.' One of the wickedest paintings ever done. A triptych of creation, heaven, and hell . . . a depiction of the world, with the progression of sin. Sinful pleasures! It will be marvelous! I'm ancient now, but darling, there's no one in this town who's partaken of more sinful pleasures than I. I'll wear a midnight-blue cape, and as a prop, I'll carry a magic cup. Which reminds me!”

  “What's that, Augusta?” Tara asked.

  “Have you found my Florizar cup yet?”

  “The silver cup . . .”

  “I still can't put my hands on it! I've looked high and low. It would be the perfect addition to my costume. What good is a witch without a magic potion?”

  “I'll pay extra attention today, Augusta,” Tara said. “It can't have gone far.”

  “The last time I recall using it—and this is rather haunting—was when Sean McCabe stopped by the week before his disappearance. To bilk me, as it turns out, but at the time, I thought it was just that he wanted me to sign checks moving money from one place to another. We toasted the success of my yield . . .”

  “Oh, Sean,” Tara said under her breath.

  “He can't possibly have taken my Florizar cup,” Augusta said, rejecting the idea. “He wasn't a kleptomaniac, after all. White-collar confidence men don't get their hands dirty with actual stealing . . .”

  The words were suspended in air, in time, as Augusta and Tara pondered the notion of stealing—the act of one person taking from another, whether from bank accounts or trust funds or from a wallet or a pocket or from the wall of a museum or the vault of a jeweler—and whether in the Piazza San Marco, the Place Vendôme, or Firefly Hill. The “hows” and “wheres” didn't matter, and neither, ultimately, did the “whys.”

  “Stealing is the true sin,” Augusta said. “Not earthly pleasures.”

  “I know.”

  Augusta took a long breath in, and then let it go. “I have too many things,” she said. “Accumulation is a fact of life . . . and not a good fact. When I get to heaven, Saint Peter won't let me carry in Hugh's paintings, my photos of the girls, my black pearls, my Florizar cup.”

  “No, I suppose he won't,” Tara said.

  “Just as I'm certain he didn't admit Sean with all that stolen money.”

  “If he admitted Sean at all,” Tara said sadly.

  JOE HOLMES THOUGHT BLACK HALL WAS PROBABLY A FINE place to be if you lived here—nice houses, views, stores, schools, restaurants, music shops—but as a place for temporary assignment, it was pretty lonely, geared toward couples or families.

  He sat at his desk, drinking yet another cup of coffee from the place next door, doing what FBI agents did best: paperwork.

  One of Joe's recent girlfriends had always answered the door with expectation in her eyes, as if she was expecting him to be James Bond. Or at least Tommy Lee Jones. When she realized that what he did was more in line with geek accountants than glamorous movie spies, she left him for a lawyer.

  Joe's father had taught him that lawyers were much more likely to have Aston Martins than FBI agents. Also, much more likely to get sent on sexy missions that included good hotels with pools and fancy sheets and expensive drinks at sleek bars. If FBI agents
wanted to track a suspect around the country—even staying in airport Radissons—getting a supervisor to sign off on the expense requisition would be as thrilling as actually solving the case.

  “You're not doing it for the glamour,” his father had said to Joe one time when Joe complained about life on the road. “You're doing it to catch bad guys.”

  “I know, Dad,” Joe had said. “Just like you.”

  “You make me proud, son,” his father had said.

  That had really been enough to make up for the crummy motels and the fast food.

  Now, outside, the rain beat down. Perfect for Joe's mood as, again, he went through the Shoreline Bank documents. One confusing aspect was the discovery that Sean had paid back ten thousand dollars from one of the accounts he had starred.

  Had he been intending to move it somewhere else, convert it to cash later on? Joe wasn't sure. In another case, last May, Sean had stolen six hundred dollars from one account on Friday, put it back the next Monday. What had caused his change of heart? Joe pored over the account statements, looking for answers. Could it have had something to do with the mystery woman—“the girl”? Or with “Ed”?

  There still wasn't any clear-cut “Ed.” Ralph Edward Benjamin's nickname was “Red,” a contraction of the two names as much as a reference to his childhood hair color. There were also Eduardo Valenti and Edwin Taylor, neither of whom seemed very promising. Valenti had been at Columbia until May, and Taylor's record seemed spotless.

  Joe stretched, listening to the rain fall. At least he didn't have to slave in a wet garden, like Bay McCabe. He'd driven by Firefly Hill twice that week, and both times he'd seen her laboring outside.

  That second time, he'd seen Tara O'Toole running across the wide expanse of lawn, toward her friend. The image endured in Joe's mind: She looked like a young girl, wild with abandon, oblivious to the driving rain. Her long legs, slender arms, black hair . . .

  And last night he had dreamed about her.

  About them, really. These two best friends, right at the center of Joe's investigation. In his dream, they were all in a boat on the Sound. Joe was someone's husband—a novel idea in itself. He was at the helm, steering over the waves. Shards of memory, long buried, of being on the deck of his father's fishing boat, came up and took hold. The joy of being at sea, running with the wind.

  And the two women were there. Bay leaning against the coaming, Tara with her arm slung around Joe's neck. The wind ruffled his hair, tickled his ear. No, it was a kiss. The sensation was so intense, her kiss even stronger than the breeze itself, moving him even as the wind moved their boat.

  “Joe,” she whispered in his ear. “You don't have to steer anymore. Just take your hands off the wheel . . . go ahead . . .”

  But Joe's hands couldn't relax their grip; he had to hold tight, keep the boat on course. She caressed his neck, his back; all he wanted to do was grab her in his arms and take her down below, rip off all her clothes, make love to her, his wife.

  Tara O'Toole Holmes. She seemed to spend a lot of time in Andy's. Yesterday she had been talking to the clerk about something called “the Pumpkin Ball,” pointedly, it had seemed to Joe. What did she have in mind? That Joe walk over from the “Over the Hill” rack to ask her if he could have the pleasure of taking her? Sad to say, dating someone in the investigation was against Bureau policy.

  Nothing so tormenting in his dreams, though . . .

  Joe had wakened, smiling, content, but then, right away, the sense of connection was broken. He had held his motel-room pillow close to his chest, as if it was Tara, as if he had rolled over to actually find her in his bed.

  He wondered what it would be like to spend time with Tara, to go with her to Bay's house on a fine fall evening. He had seen them sitting there together often enough, just the two of them together in the midst of Bay's kids. Two lifelong friends with such beautiful smiles and spirit, riding through the garbage Sean McCabe had left behind for them. Joe would never do that to a woman he loved.

  He just wouldn't. On the other hand, he couldn't figure out why a good guy like himself had had so little luck finding a girl like Tara to love. He had high standards. His parents had loved each other so much, he knew he couldn't settle for anything less than that. And he knew he needed someone like his mother, who understood the crazy life of an FBI agent and wasn't scared off by a guy who wore a 10mm gun out to pick up a quart of milk.

  He wondered whether the granddaughter of the number-one pistol shot in the country would be able to handle that. Maybe he should start by shocking the hell out of Tara O'Toole, showing up at this Pumpkin Ball to ask her to dance.

  He shoved his paperwork aside and reached into the lockbox.

  He had had decent success, tracking Sean's offshore account to a bank in Costa Rica—where the chances of getting access were next to zero. Especially because the code required an additional access number that Joe didn't have. He had started the process to open that account, and it would either happen or it wouldn't. Bureaucracy, nothing more.

  Maybe he should go down to Costa Rica himself. He could take Tara. She'd appreciate what a trip that place was. A tropical paradise, magnet for vacationers: located between the Pacific and the Caribbean, great beaches, fishing, hotels, romantic moonlight walks on the beach together.

  Stop it.

  It was also a mecca for con men. Con men loved Costa Rica.

  They didn't get extradited, they had secure banking, they had cheap help and favorable exchange rates, so a million U.S. dollars could buy a luxurious life on the lam. The beach bars were packed with white-collar criminals who'd packed up their families and cash and made the big break—run away from prosecution, or from prison. They'd sit at the bars all day, under the palm trees in the warm sea breezes, talking endlessly about how they'd done it, the fine arts of embezzlement, of conning, of fleecing the people who trusted them most.

  Half of them believed their own stories, their own gigs—that they hadn't meant to take anyone's money, if only the victims hadn't gotten impatient they would have paid it back. The other half knew they were lying, thieving scum, but didn't really care because they hadn't gotten caught. Or had, but managed to get away.

  Joe thought the first half were actually the most dangerous.

  Con men who conned themselves were doubly bad. Because they justified every single move they made. Every theft, every lie.

  Sean McCabe had been one of those. Joe knew the type so well. The guy had so much invested in what everyone thought of him; the irony of his crime was that he had probably wanted more money, more toys, to win more friends.

  More golf buddies, more women to admire his taste and acumen.

  When the idiot bastard had already had paradise in his own house. What a fool . . .

  Joe turned his attention to Daniel Connolly's letters to Bay, Sean's wife.

  The letters had had significance to Sean, and Joe was beginning to get an idea of why. Reading through, Joe realized that Dan Connolly was as different from Sean as one could get. Dan had something Sean had wanted, and Joe thought Sean had studied the letters to get into Dan's mind, to figure out what he needed to say to manipulate him. How much of his motive had to do with jealousy—that Dan and Bay had once, obviously, connected on a fundamental level?

  Joe wasn't sure; and he wasn't sure how much the manipulation had worked. He turned to the silver cup, and stared at it.

  Joe knew it needed much more analysis. He had sent photographs to the art lab, hoping they could make sense of the three marks stamped into the rim. If he could trace the cup . . .

  Sean McCabe's safety-deposit box had been his equivalent of a serial killer's trophy room. Joe wasn't sure what each of the three items signified, but he knew that the symbolism was probably more important than their actual worth. He wondered whether there was more silver elsewhere: Fiona's silver bowl, for example.

  Perhaps the keeping of trophies was a connection to Sean's partner, if he had one; perhaps it had been Sean's ins
urance policy, against betrayal. Or maybe it had been their way of showing off, one-upping each other.

  The number, the letters, and the cup . . .

  Joe almost had the connection—it was so close—he was positive he almost had it. But it proved as elusive as holding on to Tara in last night's dream. Now he took out the manila folder he had found on the boat.

  He stared at Sean's tortured notations on the cover and in the margins—when had he made them? The girl . . . and Ed. Inside, the accounts he had begun to pay back. Thumbing through, Joe calculated the dates.

  What if Sean had started feeling guilty about his crimes? What if he had been determined to make restitution, instead of continuing to steal? Hadn't Bay told Joe, in one of their first interviews, that Sean had promised her he would change? From the dates in the folder, it seemed that Sean had started to do just that not long before he died, late last spring.

  What if Sean had actually tried to change—and someone hadn't liked it?

  Joe's heart beat faster, and he knew he was on the right track. What if “the girl” wasn't one of Sean's conquests at all—but someone Sean knew to be in danger?

  Bay, for example?

  Or one of their daughters?

  He stared at the truck, and let his mind drift. What role did a truck play in this case? Nothing much, unless you counted the hit-and-run of Charlotte Connolly. Hadn't she been killed by a truck?

  He thumbed through the file—there it was: a van. She'd been killed by a dark red van. Now Joe looked back at Sean's drawing. Maybe a van, maybe a panel truck. Too much hood to be clearly a van. A boatyard truck? Still, it was all he had, so he closed up the folder and decided to take a drive east.

  25

  KELLY'S LANDSCAPERS WAS BRIGHT WITH pumpkins, haystacks, and apples. Filling the back of her station wagon with mulch and lime, Bay couldn't concentrate on next summer's flowers.

  She couldn't get Dan out of her mind. The feel of his arms around her. His rough skin against hers. Their closeness. The thing he had started to tell her at the end . . .