Nantucket Red Tickets

by Steven Axelrod

  “You may get your chance. To testify.”

  I shook his hand and pushed back out the door through the small screen porch into still, frigid air. It was full dark, now. The surf was rumbling beyond the dunes, and I was late for dinner. I had the kids tonight, and that meant Jane was alone and badly outnumbered.

  Like the last-minute five-dollar donation that secures the funding for a fifty-thousand dollar Kickstarter project, I got a final contribution as I drove back to town.

  Kyle Donnelly had been researching Clifford Marks and Rafe Talerian, the ones who supported Blum’s story about using chewing tobacco tins as party decorations.

  As I suspected, they both had deep compromising ties to Blum. Kyle’s search through the real estate filings and tax records revealed that Blum had paid off a giant tax lien on Clifford Marks’ house three years ago and now held the paper on it. Marks was three months behind and Blum could foreclose on him at whim.

  Talerian had a more complicated story. His daughter Eliza had gotten involved with an immigrant guy that her parents disapproved of—a Jamaican landscaper five years older than she was. He earned a good living, with a crew of six and three trucks complete with rattling trailers packed with riding mowers, weed whackers, and leaf blowers. His family was as distraught as hers and David Trezize had run a long piece about it in The Shoals. “Diversity and Division: Romeo and Juliet on Juniper Hill Road.” Juniper Hill was a wealthy subdivision tucked behind Moor’s End Farm, off Shimmo Pond Road. Talerian had overextended himself to buy one of the bigger houses there, and so he took the low-bid landscaper, who happened to be Bradon Edwards. His daughter started chatting with Bradon one August afternoon, and things moved quickly from there.

  Talerian’s solution: pack Eliza away to a pricey boarding school and let distance do the rest. The school was Northfield Mount Hermon, where Talerian had met his wife-to-be back in tenth grade. They both worked on the alumni committees, organizing fundraisers and even helping with the annual newsletters. They had pull and influence, but they couldn’t afford the tuition, which was topping fifty thousand dollars a year. Eliza had worked in Blum’s store and there was a shoplifting charge Blum had dropped around the same time. Store video of the crime was mentioned in depositions but never offered in discovery before the case was dismissed.

  So Blum chose not to prosecute, and helped pay for the school. Bursar’s office records showed an LLC that Kyle traced to Blum’s Pleasant Street address. As it turned out, Eliza met an extraordinary African-American young man named Marshall Stackhouse in her second year there, and married him right after graduation. She supported Marshall through Tufts medical school and his internship and residency at Brigham and Women’s. Recently he had opened a practice in Burlington, Vermont, and they were, by all accounts, living happily ever after.

  According to an article Kyle dug out from the Burlington Free Press—Eliza worked as a features editor there—meeting some actual black people had tempered her father’s racism somewhat and he had entered a state of what she called “useful confusion.”

  All of which begged the question: Why had Blum helped these two men and their families? Was he a much nicer guy than anyone suspected? I was skeptical, and Kyle had some tentative confirmation of my doubts. Blum’s son, Martin, had transferred to Northfield Mount Hermon after a disastrous two years at NHS, marked by ostracism, bullying, and bad grades. On the phone, Talerian had admitted to “twisting a few arms” to make that happen. He was glad to do it. He owed Blum “big time.”

  Talerian had been a general contractor based in Concord back in the day, and even though it meant shipping his materials across the sound by boat and flying his crews on and off the island every day, he did all the renovation work on Blum’s house and store for free. Kyle’s combing through both bank accounts showed no invoices or payments.

  So Blum took his pound of flesh.

  “My reading?” Kyle said. “He just likes having the power. These guys are terrified of him. That’s sweet, you know?”

  I nodded. “Like the smell of a bakery.”

  “Yeah. One of those all-you-can-eat bakeries where you never gain a pound.”

  “So why did they talk?”

  “Well, no one wants to be an accessory to murder, Chief. And I kind of promised I’d keep their names out of it. Is that a problem?”

  “Probably not. Don’t worry. I’ve bent the truth a few times getting a suspect to talk. Once I kind of purposely forgot to Mirandize this guy before he incriminated himself. I knew he wouldn’t talk if he thought he was a suspect. I was waiting for a reprimand or a suspension, but we got a solid confession and a clean conviction. He’s doing ten to twenty-five at Corcoran—and I got promoted. Obremski said to me, ‘Here’s an LAPD poem for you, K-Man—‘Liar liar, pay grade higher.’ Not that I approve of dishonesty in general terms, but in this case—good work.”

  “Taught by experts, Chief. Merry Christmas.”

  I ended the call as I pulled into Darling Street. So that was it—no chewing tobacco tin party decorations. Blum had bought the snuff for one reason and one reason only: to keep the rats off Coddington’s grave.

  I thought about my quarry for a few seconds before I climbed out of the warm car. For a man who hated the holidays, this was a drastically ironic turn of events.

  Jackson Blum was about to have the worst Christmas ever.

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  The Drawing

  I slipped into the house just in time to catch the end of Jane’s first battle in her war on teen chaos. I had no idea what the exact flash point had been. I stopped in the front hall to listen.

  “I don’t want to!”

  “No one wants to! Are you a baby? We all do things we don’t want to do, most of the time.”

  “So I should do everything around here?”

  “You do nothing! Start with doing something! Once! We’ll talk about you doing everything after that. Look—if you clean the mess when it happens, it never turns into this.”

  “I was going to clean it up.”

  “No you weren’t.”

  “I was! But you can’t wait! Everything has to be this second!”

  “Yes! Because that’s all you have. Life is this second. Everything else is nothing. The past is gone, the future is rushing at you and meanwhile it’s this second, and it always will be.”

  “I don’t even know what you’re talking about.”

  “I’m talking about taking care your own life now, not waiting for someone else to do it.”

  “I can’t believe this. You have no right to say this shit. You’re not my mother.”

  “No, I’m your roommate. And I won’t be the last one, either. You’re going to have roommates all your life—in college and in the city when you get your first job and eventually when you get married because your husband will be a lot of wonderful things but he’ll also be your roommate and he’s probably going to be a shitty one and you’ll be having this exact conversation with him when you finally get sick of cleaning his crusty cereal bowls and picking his wet towels off the bed. Believe me, I speak from experience. Learn to be a good roommate now. You’ll have a much better life.”

  “You’re not the boss of me.”

  “Good thing. Because you’d be fired.”

  Tim laughed. It was the first sound I’d heard him make. “She’s right,” he said.

  “Shut your stupid mouth, you zit-faced little suck-up. I’m out of here.”

  “I have one pimple! One!”

  Carrie wasn’t listening. I eased up the stairs out of sight as she stalked into the front hall and slammed out the front door. It was a cold night and all she had was a learner’s permit. She’d be back soon.

  I came downstairs and walked into the living room. The tree Jane had bought at Moors End Farm almost touched the ten-foot ceiling. She had bought extra ornaments and str
ung the tiny white lights perfectly. She had hated Christmas until Sam was born, but once he got old enough to care, she hurled herself into the holiday with typical tireless abandon. Jorma Kaukonen’s acoustic Christmas album was playing softly in the background.

  “That was intense,” I said.

  Jane walked over and hugged me. “She’ll come around.”

  “I did my own laundry today,” Tim said. “I even cleaned the lint tray in the dryer.”

  “I helped,” Sam chimed in. “I folded!”

  I could imagine how that turned out, and I could see Tim start to speak and pull back. I guessed he was enjoying having a younger brother too much to spoil it with a mean-spirited remark.

  Carrie came back an hour later, and ostentatiously hung her coat up on a hook in the hall.

  “Sorry,” she said to Jane. “You’re just like Gramma.” She meant my mother. Miranda’s mom was an unreconstructed troll straight out of Grimm’s fairy tales—the original German version, too intense for younger children. Carrie went on: “You’re always the most infuriating and annoying when you’re—the most right. Okay? You’re right. I don’t want to be a bad roommate.”

  Jane put an arm around her shoulders. “You might turn out to be one of the best roommates.”

  It looked like there might be another roommate on the scene a few minutes later. I got a call from Jacqueline Talbot at the MSPCA. The place was closed, but she wanted me to know that Bailey, Pressman’s Portuguese water dog was due to be put down the next morning. No one had wanted to adopt him. He was miserable in his cage and growled at people. “That’s not the real Bailey but it’s hard to convince people. Anyway…just thought you should know. In case…”

  I made a split-second decision. No one was going euthanize that lovely dog. If we had to pay for the floors to be refinished when we moved out, so be it. Maybe Jane would have a best seller and we’d be able to buy the place ourselves!

  “We’re picking Bailey up from the vet tomorrow morning,” I said.

  “I knew it,” Carrie said.

  Tim’s whole face seemed to widen, not just the eyes. “Really?”

  “No one wanted him but us.”

  He flung himself at me and I caught him in a hug, staggering backward a few steps. “This is so great!”

  Sam was grinning and Jane nodded a quiet assent. She was a dog person, though her family had preferred aloof little terriers. It was decided.

  Or so I thought.

  ***

  Christmas Eve started out off-kilter. I put one foot wrong getting out of bed and I wound up sideways all morning. I wanted to get to the station early so I could prepare the probable-cause materials for Judge Perlman. I wanted an arrest warrant in hand before lunch. Alan had been working with us on the case, so I knew he’d expedite the warrant if I gave him a solid affidavit—probably even a writ of capias, but I had no worries about Blum fleeing the scene. A mad dash for the airport would just confirm his guilt.

  Billy Delavane had signed a statement, as had Marks and Talerian—faxed signatures, to be followed by the notarized originals sent registered mail. I had the ballistics report on the Ruger and Marjorie’s Blum’s (reluctantly signed) statement to back up Billy Delavane’s testimony. The written narrative of the evidence clearly showed a man who had used his father’s gun to kill his partner, after quarreling over the business, and then protected the grave from rats with several pounds of chewing tobacco. We had him buying the snuff, we had an eyewitness who had seen him holding a shovel on the day in question, with the dirt from Coddington’s grave all over him, soiled clothes the wife had laundered without demur but with worried suspicion, that same evening. He had no alibi, and he had failed to dispose of the weapon, apparently for sentimental reasons relating to his father.

  The document needed to be clearly written and I was a writer. I wasn’t used to deadlines, though, and I wanted the maximum amount of time to make the chain of evidence clear and the story convincing.

  I submitted the affidavit just before lunch and Judge Perlman said he’d have an answer—and most likely, a warrant—by five. “Best to wait until after the drawing anyway,” he told me. “We wouldn’t want to disrupt our quaint annual festival of greed and disappointment.”

  “Right. I don’t want to end up in the Star Chamber.”

  He laughed. “Don’t flatter yourself, son. No secret tribunals for you. They’ll just vote to cut your pay, or run you down with one of those giant new Jeeps they drive.”

  The upshot was, I didn’t get to the MSPCA with Tim until twelve-thirty, and by the time we showed up Bailey was gone. Not put to sleep—adopted. Someone had slipped in there before us.

  “No!” Tim started crying before the vet had gotten the words out.

  “Wait a second, I told you—”

  “You didn’t give us a verbal commitment. It’s first come, first served, Chief. Sorry.”

  Tim turned on me. “You didn’t tell them we wanted Bailey?”

  “Yes, I did, I said—”

  “Well, they didn’t get it, Dad! And now he’s gone!”

  “Sorry, Chief—they just left twenty minutes ago. I kind of expected you first thing this morning.”

  “I don’t believe this,” Tim moaned.

  “I was writing a murder warrant affidavit,” I said.

  “So what? Who cares? You could have written it after we got Bailey.”

  “Tim—”

  “I hate you!”

  I reached for him but he flinched away from me. “I’m going back to the car.”

  I watched as he slouched out of the big glass doors and crossed the parking lot to my cruiser.

  “Sorry, Chief. I guess we got our wires crossed.”

  “Yeah, I guess so. Merry Christmas.”

  I followed Tim outside through a swirl of snow flurries, and climbed into the car.

  “At least he’s going to a good home,” I offered.

  Tim looked away, out the passenger side window. “Yeah, just not ours. Thanks, Dad.”

  We drove home in silence. There was nothing more to say. Both of us knew I had blown it. I had always sworn I wouldn’t turn into one of those fathers who put work ahead of family.

  This was why.

  ***

  The Nantucket Christmas Eve Red Ticket Drawing represented more than sixteen million dollars in sales this year. Of course the results were skewed away from pure gift-giving, since Stop&Shop started to participate. It was a good change. It turned the drawing toward a more egalitarian note, and gave an immigrant family with lots of kids, who spent most of their disposable income on food, a better chance to win. Though obviously the gloating one-percenter with a roll of tickets and a ten-page list of numbers from buying a new Jeep Grand Wagoneer would always have the edge. But that was Nantucket in a nutshell.

  Still it was good to see the crowd.

  Main Street was packed, curb to curb, sidewalk to sidewalk, storefront to storefront, with thousands of people and they were all in a party mood. The temperature had dropped into the twenties but the weather had cleared and no one seemed to mind. People were greeting old friends, patting each others’ dogs, hugging each others’ kids. Bundled toddlers were riding their fathers’ shoulders and there were faces at every second-story window overlooking the street. My police were out in force, ready to quell a riot, but I had given strict orders to leave people alone and join in the spirit of the afternoon.

  Raised in Manhattan and Los Angeles, my concept of crowds was formed by throngs of crazed fans in front of the Pantages or the Kodak Theatre on Oscar night, the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade and New Year’s Eve in Times Square. Those, and the big political rallies, the angry marches, like the giant nuclear freeze demonstration the summer I turned ten. The idea of people gathering in such numbers just to be together struck me as bizarre and quaint and wonderful.
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  No one really expected to win the drawing, but everyone would be happy for the person who did. It felt like a giant surprise party, thrown by everyone for everyone else, and no one was really surprised but me. This wasn’t Shirley Jackson’s New England, with grim squinting Puritans cleansing their collective sins through murderous rituals of atonement. These locals were going to throw money and kisses, not stones. If their sin was greed, it was a festive, self-mocking version of that transgression.

  I saw most of my friends and acquaintances as I pushed the crush of people toward the bank steps. I embraced Mike and Cindy Henderson, twirled their two-year-old little girl, shook hands with Pat Folger and Billy Delavane and the Graham family, hugged David Trezize, air-kissed Elaine Bailey, and lifted a hand to greet a dozen others.

  When I noticed Sam Trikilis, he was clutching a cardboard box full of plastic bags stuffed with tickets organized numerically. For reference he had the familiar printout of numbers, running to six pages.

  He jammed it all between his left arm and his side, freed up his right hand and shook mine.

  “How is Alana doing?” I asked him.

  “On the mend. She’ll be out of the hospital tonight and home for Christmas. We hope. It might be her last Christmas in the house, so…”

  I checked out the bounty of Red Tickets, and he saw the perplexed look on my face. “They’re all from my friends, Chief—the tickets,” he said. “And customers, and teachers at the school. All donated! I couldn’t believe it.”

  “People love you, Sam.”

  “Well, I love them right back, and it was a great gesture and I’m so grateful to everyone but…I mean—it’s not going to do any good. The raffle’s still a million-to-one shot. It’s a great way to say good-bye, though.”

  “Sam—”

  “Hey, let’s face facts. It would take a miracle to get my family out of this one, Chief.”

  At that moment I remembered the Red Ticket in my pocket, the one I had taken from Patty Whelden’s diary.

  Lizza Coddington was still going to palm its twin when the five-thousand-dollar ticket was drawn, and Patty Whelden no doubt thought she was going to drive the conspiracy home by claiming the money.