A Month at the Shore

by Antoinette Stockenberg

  "Here comes Gabe!" Corinne said, and for the life of her, Laura could not be sure whether her sister thought it was good news or bad at that particular moment.

  They waited in resounding silence as Gabe pulled in beside the pickup truck. Compared to them, he looked reasonably carefree, smiling a greeting that encompassed them all but that dwelled on Corinne. He went one better, coming up to her and slipping his arm lightly around her for a first-time-ever public kiss. Corinne smiled shyly and cast her look downward, the picture of confused desire.

  Gabe was dirty and his shoes were covered in caked-on mud. He'd been working the earth, a match for Laura in every way except for the six-pack of Budweiser that was hooked through his fingers.

  "I've just knocked off for the day," he explained. "I stopped at Smitty's Package on my way home to a shower—but you guys look like you need a beer even more than I do."

  He knows as much as Ken knows, thought Laura. And he feels bad for Corinne. That's not good.

  Snack held up a hand and Gabe broke out a can from the plastic retainer and tossed it to him; Corinne, Ken, and Laura passed on his offer. Gabe had to have seen the van parked in front of the house but politely wasn't commenting on it.

  Corinne felt obliged to tell him about the warrant anyway. She was still talking when they heard a shout from someone standing in front of the run-down toolshed. Almost immediately, two men who were in the house left through a side door to join him. One of them carried a camera.

  "They could curb the enthusiasm a little," muttered Snack, holding the can to explode away from him as he popped its tab.

  "Does this mean they're done with the house?" Corinne wanted to know. "Can I start supper? I don't want to turn on the oven if they're going to be fingerprinting the stove or something."

  Now what? thought Laura. What could they possibly find in an unused tool shed that had been filled with rusty, obsolete farm tools for as long as she could remember?

  ****

  A bag filled with money, that's what.

  The investigators didn't tell them that, of course. They simply walked down to them and held up an old satchel-style, Gucci-looking bag whose fake leather corners were torn brown plastic.

  "This belong to anyone?" one of the investigators said, holding up the filthy, dust-covered bag in his gloved hand.

  "Not me," Corinne said quickly.

  "Nope."

  "I've never seen it before," said Laura.

  "We'll be taking this," he informed Corinne. "I'll need you to sign for it."

  He didn't sound either arrogant or mean, but Laura hated him anyway. She hated all of them and wanted them all to go back to tracking down their serial killer or hit man or whoever it was they were looking for before Baskerville entered the scene with a woof and a bang.

  She said dryly, "Can we have our house back now?"

  "Anytime you want," one of the men answered, which was no answer at all.

  The investigators were walking past Laura when Snack said after them, "I wouldn't go packing my Jockey shorts in that thing; it's bound to be filled with bugs. You'd be better off hopping over to Wal-Mart for a new one."

  "Thanks for the tip," one of them said without looking back.

  Laura could see by the way he was carrying the satchel that the guy felt sure he was going to have the last laugh. Staring at the bag, she suddenly understood why.

  She waited until they were well away, then turned to her brother and said, "What is it with you? Do you have a death wish or something? Do you have any idea what's in that bag?"

  "Yeah. Bugs."

  "Money, you idiot," she said in a hiss. "I saw the tip of a bill sticking out the middle."

  Ken said, "Are you sure of that?"

  "I know money when I see it!"

  "Ken, you're the banker," Snack drawled. "Did you notice any money?"

  "I wasn't watching that closely," Ken said quietly.

  And Laura knew why: he was watching them, watching their reactions to see who was acting guilty and who wasn't. Coming on top of everything else, it absolutely infuriated her.

  Meanwhile, Gabe was looking like a Red Sox fan at a cricket match. "I don't get it; I thought they were winding down the search."

  So Gabe wasn't in the loop, after all. Laura said bitterly, "Just ask Ken for the latest. He's pretty thick with the chief and his pals. He probably has a copy of the ME's report in his glove compartment right now."

  "Okay, Laura," Ken said evenly. "Let's you and I have a quick private chat, shall we?" He took her by the elbow and began to steer her away from the others and toward the aisle of potted roses that were starting to bloom for an audience that was bound to be severely limited.

  Laura was angry enough to lift her elbow pointedly out of Ken's grip, but she walked out with him anyway. Whatever he had to say, good, bad, or infuriating, she had an almost desperate need to hear it.

  As soon as they were out of earshot, he said bluntly, "You want me to throw myself at your feet and beg for forgiveness because I didn't tell you about Billy. All right. Consider it done."

  She said, "Oh, yeah. Just like that. You don't know me very well, mister. I'm a Shore: we're mean and vindictive and we have tempers hot enough to melt paint off a picket fence."

  "Bullshit. Corinne, for one, is the gentlest soul I know."

  "Oh, her," Laura said dismissively. But meanwhile she felt cut to the quick that he was leaving Laura herself lumped with the rest of the Shores. The realization was a bucket of water on her sizzling temper.

  She said in a lower but still lofty voice, "I assume you stayed away the past couple of days so that you wouldn't compromise yourself?"

  "Myself? Be serious, Laura. You know me better than that."

  She shook her head. "Do I? All I know about you is that you were quick to buy out the mortgage we had with Great River Finance. Which puts us in your power. As actual facts go, that's pretty much it."

  That was so not it that she felt her cheeks heat up, as they always did when she deliberately distorted the truth.

  "I'll ignore that," he said through clenched teeth. "You're stressed. You're not thinking."

  She stopped halfway down the row of roses and turned to face him. A thorny cane that brushed the back of her calf seemed to goad her into continuing the confrontation. "Why didn't you tell me what you knew?" she asked, not backing down an inch into forgiving territory. "What do you still know that I don't? Why are they circling around us like buzzards?"

  "What do you plan to do with the information?" he asked in turn.

  "I won't say a word. Not to anybody." Which was probably just what Billy had got done promising him.

  "All right, damn it."

  He told her about the maple leaf belt buckle that had been found in the compost pile, and whatever was left of Laura's belligerence dried up like fog under a noonday sun. She was devastated.

  "You said that Sylvia was from up north somewhere," he went on. "Did you mean Canada?"

  "I ... don't remember."

  "Laura, you do. It's written all over your face."

  "She might have been," Laura acknowledged, lifting her chin. "So what?"

  Ken glanced around again and dropped his voice even lower. "You have to see that the coincidences are piling up. If it really is Sylvia who was buried in there, what will you gain by denying it? Would you really rather be behind the curve in the investigation?"

  "Well, I sure as hell don't plan to fill in any missing blanks for the chief!" she said in a blistering undertone. "Do you think I'm crazy?"

  "People will be questioned. You'll be questioned. And you're not going to lie, Laura. You know you're not."

  "No? Just watch me."

  "You know you're not," he insisted softly.

  She looked away. "If that was a vote of confidence in me, I'm not particularly touched by it."

  But it was a vote of confidence, and she was touched by it. He had trusted her enough to tell her what he knew, and he believed in her enough to know
that she wasn't capable of lying to the police. That was something. That was big.

  He must have seen her anger melting around the edges because he said, "What was Sylvia's last name?"

  She waited a long time before answering. There were so many considerations, so many fears that went into that pause.

  At last she whispered, "Mendan."

  One word. She handed it to him like a gift, a token of her gratitude and faith in him.

  "Who was this Sylvia?" he said with a certain amount of wonder in his voice. "Should I feel lucky that I wasn't around to fall under her spell?"

  "Yes," Laura said, taking his question seriously. "Sylvia was someone you didn't forget, which is why nobody has. She was just incredibly beautiful. Black hair, huge blue eyes, perfect skin, long legs, big breasts, the works. Heads always turned when she was around. Man, woman, young, old. None of us could figure out what she was doing working for minimum wage here when she could have been on the cover of Cosmo. She knew it too. She was arrogant and not afraid of anyone—including my father," Laura felt obliged to say.

  She could picture Sylvia so vividly now—much more clearly than when she had simply read the name on the little stakes in Miss Widdich's potted herbs.

  She started up their walk again, compelled by the need to do something; anything. "Sylvia had a tattoo on her ankle, large for the time," she went on. "A bluebird, of all things. Everyone else was getting butterflies. But Syl was like that; she didn't care what anyone else thought. Definitely, she was a free spirit."

  They were beyond the rose aisle now, headed toward a refuge of balled and burlapped trees for sale. With every step that she took away from the others, away from the house, Laura felt better. Ken was perfect in a one-on-one situation like the one they were in just then; she couldn't imagine ever being bored in his company.

  But irritated? Yes. He managed to evoke a flash of that when he asked, "What did your brother think about Sylvia?"

  "What I just told you: that she was gorgeous. Not that a fifteen-year-old would ever admit to it. But he stared. We all stared," she insisted, "Corinne more than anyone else, for that matter. She and I were both wildly jealous of Sylvia. Corinne couldn't get over the bluebird tattoo. After she saw it, she asked my mother for permission to get a little bee on her shoulder, and my mother about had a heart attack. I remember that Sylvia thought my mother's reaction was hysterically funny. She couldn't imagine that anyone would care."

  Her thoughts went back to Billy's account of what he saw. It didn't seem possible. She said, "I don't see how Billy could remember an argument after so many years. I mean, he's Billy."

  "From what he told me, he was as mesmerized by Sylvia as everyone else."

  Laura gave Ken a sharp look. "How mesmerized?"

  "I know what you're thinking. I've been wondering myself whether Billy isn't just projecting a crime he committed onto some fantasy murderer—a kind of twisted version of an imaginary pal."

  "Well, couldn't he be doing just that?"

  "I'm sure you can find an expert witness somewhere to say so."

  "But you don't believe it," she said with a sigh. She was having a hard time believing something like that about Billy herself. And yet, was it any harder than accepting that the killer had been a member of her own family?

  "It's such a horror story," she moaned. "This whole thing started as a simple, ordinary dedication of a gravestone. And then I agreed to stay on ... and worse, I talked Snack into staying on. And this is what the month has brought us to: a murder investigation. Of us, apparently. I can't believe it. And I can't believe that Sylvia Mendan is just ... bones. Oh, God," she said, sick over the ghastly image. "Not just a headline, anymore. Someone we knew."

  She stopped, paralyzed by the thought, and was surprised when Ken took her in his arms. She should have resisted—she still resented his not telling her about Billy—but it felt so right. Just for a moment, it felt so right. She bowed her head in a simple gesture of sorrow. Not for them now, but for poor Sylvia, who'd never had the chance to grow old.

  "You'll get through this," Ken whispered, stroking her hair. "Don't worry. One way or another, you'll get through it."

  She nodded into his shirt and didn't even try to keep her tears from staining it. Soon other tears were mixing with the ones meant for Sylvia; it had been such a turbulent, grueling, heartbreaking month.

  With a wrenching sigh, Laura got herself under control. She said, "How did Chief Mellon react when you told him what Billy said?"

  Now it was Ken's turn to look evasive and troubled. "I haven't told Andy yet."

  She looked up at that. "You haven't told him? Why not?" But of course she knew why not: because of her. "You have to tell him," she conceded glumly. "I know that. Even Snack won't argue with that. Just ... get it over with." She eased out of his arms, resentful once more. "Oh, look," she said wearily. "The van's leaving."

  "Do you want to go back now?" he asked.

  "Yes; I have to clean up." She had a sudden and almost desperate need to be showered and squeaky clean. She'd had her fill of nature and dirt.

  She blew her nose on the hem of her T-shirt before Ken had the chance to retrieve his handkerchief for her. He smiled and stuffed it back in his pocket, and they headed back.

  But something was off kilter, like a framed picture hanging slightly askew. "If Chief Mellon doesn't yet know Billy's story ... then why did they get a consent warrant for the house?"

  "My question exactly," said Ken. He sounded so grim that Laura's heart took another dive.

  "I did think that Andy was behaving a little too much like the sheriff of Mayberry yesterday," Ken went on, "and now I see why. He was setting me up, the wily bastard. He has another piece of evidence besides the buckle. He was assuming that I would come straight to you with that information, and he was waiting to see who would do what as a result."

  "But you didn't, so no one did anything."

  "And they've decided to take it to the next level anyway. Hell. What do they have?"

  "Something that seems to point to us, you mean."

  Ken said nothing; Laura took it as a yes. After another moment, she said, "It wasn't Snack."

  Again he said nothing.

  "Ken—it wasn't my father, it couldn't be my uncle, it wasn't Snack. It wasn't!"

  His answer to that was a look of horrible, hideous sympathy.

  She could feel it building in her, a bitter impulse to knock down his silence. She wanted him to say blindly, of course you're right, whatever you say, I believe you because you would know.

  Any and all of those responses would be acceptable. Instead, he continued to maintain an unnerving quiet. If it wasn't just her luck to fall for a man with such a depressing amount of integrity. Her mood became more and more bleak, and she walked in a silence that became as chill and thick as a Cape Cod fog.

  When they got back to the shop, Gabe was gone and so was Snack. Only Corinne was there, and she had news.

  "They've taken away all the old office records from just before and just after 1987," she said, agog that it had come to that. "I listened at the top of the cellar stairs; they didn't realize how well their voices traveled up. They took a whole bunch of moldy boxes. I think they're looking for employment information for Sylvia; they must actually think it's her!"

  "Lots of luck to 'em, then," Laura said. "We all know that Dad never put seasonal help on the books; he paid them under the table."

  It wasn't what Corinne wanted to hear. "Laura! Don't you get it? They really must believe that those were Sylvia's remains."

  "They don't even know her name yet," Laura said with a sideways glance at Ken.

  But it was clear that they were about to.

  ****

  Hours later and under a black, starless canopy of sky, Laura crept through the nursery to the rose area. She could scarcely see the potted plants, but she was prepared to follow her nose: Summer Wine, that was the hybrid musk she was after. She had noticed it earlier as she drifted i
n a state of shock and sorrow across the grounds with Ken.

  The rose was big and blowsy and bold: a lively coral, fading to a bright gold center and bursting with red stamens. Summer Wine. Even the name fit. Laura found it easily, though it was dark. She took her secateurs from the patch pocket of her chenille robe and cut off a single opened rose, then inhaled its alluring, heavy scent. Yes. Sylvia would have approved of Summer Wine.

  Continuing on her impulsive mission, she made her way to the yellow tape that surrounded the dregs of the original compost pile.

  What might she have been?

  For a long, sad moment, Laura pondered the multitude of odd twists and quirks of fate that had her standing in her nightgown next to a crime scene in the place she once had no choice but to call home.

  "Rest in peace," she whispered into the stillness of the soft May night.

  Leaning over the tape, she pitched the rose. It landed on a low mound of loose soil, its frilly, scalloped petals as flirty and feminine as an old-fashioned Gibson girl.

  "Amen," she murmured, and then she retraced her steps to her room in the darkened farmhouse and tried again to sleep.

  Chapter 26

  The Chepaquit Police Station was located back-to-back with the Chepaquit Savings Bank, but Ken saw far more of Andy Mellon when they were on their boats at Creasey's Marina than he did when they were at their desks at their respective jobs. Maybe it was because the bank and the police station fronted on two different streets. Maybe it was simply because, for Ken, business and pleasure didn't mix.

  Today he was all business. At eight a.m. he cut across both parking lots and greeted the dispatcher at the police desk with the same friendly smile that he'd given her at Belle's Cafe when they stood in line at seven, waiting to buy the still-warm chocolate-covered doughnuts that (if Belle was to be believed) were famous for miles around.

  "Hey, again. Chief Mellon around?" he asked, glancing at the empty cells behind her. Empty. Good. Snack was still allowed to be at large.

  Cindy leaned back in her swivel chair and threw her head back. "Chief?" she called out over her shoulder.

  "What now?"

  She lifted her eyebrows above a smile. "He's in," she said to Ken, and she went back to pecking her keyboard, leaving him to fend for himself.