Black Swan (A Sam Acquillo Hamptons Mystery)

by Chris Knopf

  "Okay, go ahead."

  I did my best, adding detail as it came to me, occasionally asking Anika to chime in. The others just stood around and listened, everyone but Grace, who Christian Fey held to his chest with both arms and rocked from side to side. Amanda came down the path, after seeing the light from the cruiser.

  "Sam?" she said, moving to my side and taking the part of my arm recently vacated by Anika. Her grip tightened as she heard the account I was giving the cop, whose name plate read JENNIFER POOLE. She wrote briskly in a little case book pulled out of the back pocket of her slacks, her flashlight held under her arm.

  She was clearly rattled, but to her credit, acted like she wasn't.

  "So no one's touched the body since it was discovered," she said.

  "Grace hugged him," said Anika.

  "And Christian Fey tried to release him from the noose. Both understandable reactions," I said.

  Trooper Poole took a cell phone out of a holster and walked away from the gathering to make a call.

  "We have no coroner on the island," she said when she came back, looking at me darkly. "And minimum forensics. Plus the ferry just stopped service due to the weather. I called the closest CSI team, which is at the state barracks in Riverhead. The coast guard can get them out here, but it'll take a while, since they have to sail over to Orient Point from Connecticut."

  "Are we talking hours?" I asked.

  "We are."

  "Seems pretty grim to just leave him there," I said.

  "They said I could take him down as long as I cleared that part of the scene."

  "Do you know how to do that?" I asked.

  She looked at me, sizing me up.

  "Mostly," she said.

  "You have a digital camera?" I asked.

  "I do."

  "At least we can record everything," I said. At my request, Anika retrieved a tape measure and a box of surgical gloves Axel used in the hotel kitchen. I took the box and pulled out a pair for me and handed another to Trooper Poole.

  "Before we do that, leave me alone with him for a few minutes," she said. She put on the gloves and went in the booth, then closed the door. Ten minutes later she emerged with a look that said, "Don't ask."

  The brilliant pop of Trooper Poole's camera aided my careful recording of the body's position relative to the house and the wall of the shower stall, and the distance from the noose around his neck to the top of the stall. Then I brought her around to the other side of the wall and showed her where the line had been tied to a cleat bolted to the hotel's foundation. It was used to secure an extravagant canopy that shaded the walkway. A foot above the cleat two loops were tied in the line.

  Poole shot more pictures and I made a dozen more measurements.

  After that, with the young cop's help, I uncleated the line and lowered Myron's body to the ground.

  Anika had sent her brother to retrieve some bed-sheets that we used to cover Myron's body, for the sake of his dignity and the witnesses' fragile hold on personal composure.

  Then Poole shut the shower stall and put a piece of tape across the jamb. It was a type that would shred if you tried to remove it. She used the same material to tape off the top, supported by a ladder also fetched by Axel Fey. When she was finished, we all went into the hotel and settled in the lounge, all but Grace who demanded to go to her room. Amanda volunteered to go with her, which Grace accepted with minimal resistance. I whispered in Amanda's ear.

  "See if you can get a sleeping pill into her, if she has any. Put the rest in your pocket."

  Amanda nodded and put her arm around the tiny woman, helping her up the narrow old stairs to her room.

  Trooper Poole asked for a room where she could take each of our statements in private. I looked around and counted a full contingent, minus Anderson Track, who'd apparently slipped away. Derrick leaned against the bar with his hands in his pockets, with one of Del Rey's arms through one of his. 't Hooft was behind the bar pouring beers for himself and the Feys. Nobody argued with Poole's request that we all stay put, and she went off with Christian to find a room and do her first interview. I joined 't Hooft behind the bar and poured myself a tall Absolut on the rocks.

  "Makes no sense," said Derrick.

  "What doesn't?" I asked.

  "Killing himself. He had his challenges, but Christ."

  "He didn't kill himself," I said.

  "You know a lot for a guy who delivers boats," said 't Hooft.

  "There was too much slack in the line," I said. "Serious suicides make sure there's no turning back. To do a proper job, he would have cleated off a shorter line, stood on the seat inside the shower, jumped off and that'd be it."

  "People who seem happy are sometimes the most depressed," said Del Rey. "Who's to say Myron wasn't one of those?"

  "There you have it," said Derrick. "A phenomenally trenchant psychoanalysis, explaining all."

  Del Rey jerked at his arm.

  "Just a theory," she said. "No reason to get fresh."

  "Never argue with a theoretician," I said. "Sometimes they're right."

  "See?" said Del Rey, with more emphasis than was necessary.

  "I'll take that under advisement," said Derrick.

  "I knew Myron better than most people," she said, looking at Hammon. "He talked to me."

  "What about?" I asked.

  "Nothing he'd want you to share," said Hammon. Del Rey snapped her mouth shut and looked away.

  As we waited for Poole to come back, the room settled into a pair of loose confederations. Me and Anika cleaved to the bar, while 't Hooft, Derrick and Del Rey sat around a small cocktail table, none of them looking entirely comfortable. Axel rocked back and forth on one of the bar-stools, which he'd moved to the center of the room. Anika kept one eye on him and the other on Derrick's contingent.

  A general gloom had gathered about the group at large, which Del Rey seemed slightly desperate to lift. She waved at me and Anika.

  "Hey, people," she said, "how's the weather over there?"

  "Mixed and variable," I told her.

  A brief burst of wind clattered the window at the other end of the room. I watched everyone's eyes shift in that direction-everyone but Axel, who seemed to be staring at Derrick Hammon.

  Who, in turn, was staring at me.

  "So, Mr. Acquillo," he said. "What's your deal?"

  "Everybody's got a deal?" I said.

  "No. Just some people. What's yours?"

  "Finish carpentry."

  "Why is your name so familiar?"

  "The world's lousy with Acquillos," I said.

  "Of course."

  Trooper Poole and Christian walked into the room. He had his hands in his pants pockets and she was writing in her little case book. She looked up and around the room, trying to figure out the next victim.

  "Me, me," said Anika, raising her hand. "I got there just a few seconds after Grace. I want to get this out of the way."

  When they left, I sat on one of the bar-stools, keeping my distance from Axel, but suggesting a shared experience. He noticed and briefly stopped rocking. I smiled at him and he smiled back.

  "So, Axel," said Derrick, "the dad still have you developing?"

  "He looks pretty developed already," said Del Rey.

  "He means coding," said 't Hooft, jumping in front of Derrick's impending response. "Computer programming."

  "Oh."

  "We're in the hotel business now," said Axel, looking down at the floor.

  "Of course you are," said Derrick.

  't Hooft took a long sip of his beer, looking at the kid over the lip of the mug. The room was silent after that, until Poole and Anika came back. It was two hours before Poole had taken everyone's statement, including Grace, in her bedroom while Amanda waited outside. I kept Amanda company.

  "I don't know what the officer expects to learn from her," said Amanda. "The woman's in complete shock. Who wouldn't be."

  "Did you tell anyone I was finished with the boat repair?" I
asked.

  She shook her head.

  "I just said you were working on it."

  "Good."

  The CSI team called Poole on her cell phone to announce their arrival. She was just leaving Grace's bedroom, and Amanda offered again to stick around and look after the distraught woman. Poole thanked Amanda and asked me to come outside with her so I could give her my version before she left to pick up the CSI's.

  When we reached her cruiser, she stopped to talk.

  "You're known," she said to me.

  "By whom?"

  "My boss. Semple's a friend of his."

  She meant Ross Semple, the Town of Southampton's chief of police. I wondered what being a friend of his would be like. She had to mean a professional friend, because who could be both smart enough and weird enough to be on personal terms. I said as much.

  "Semple thinks you're dirty. But he likes you anyway. My boss said you could help, but to keep an eye on you."

  "Whatever that means," I said. "You've got more serious issues than me. Sanderfreud was murdered and unless it was some ninja that swam ashore, did the deed, then swam back to a submarine off the coast, it's somebody on the island, and likely in that house."

  "Semple thinks you killed someone yourself," said Poole, "but he could never prove it."

  "Nobody's perfect."

  "Sanderfreud's friends all think he hung himself. What do you think?"

  "Simple. Wait until Sanderfreud's busy taking his shower. Put a ladder next to the stall and climb up until you can see over the lip. Stick your foot in one of the loops tied in the middle of the line, slip the noose over the guy's neck and jump off the ladder. Then just wait until the thrashing stops, cleat off the line and step out of the loop."

  "That's what I think, too," she said, as if I'd just passed a test. "Clever bit of engineering. Isn't that your specialty? Clever engineering?"

  "You'd have to prove Amanda's lying about where I was."

  "Semple's not so sure about her, either."

  "If you want my help, you can knock off the innuendo," I said. "Besides being insulting, it's a waste of time you don't have."

  It was hard to see her face in whatever light was reaching us from the hotel. And harder to read her thoughts by the way she stood with her right hand resting on top of her holster.

  "You'll be here when I get back," she said, part question, part command, though she shook my hand before getting in her car. I said I'd be there and watched her drive away.

  Back in the house, I bypassed the bar where everyone still congregated and went upstairs to Grace's room. I gently knocked on the door and Amanda answered. She slipped quietly out into the hall and shut the door.

  "I did what you asked," she said. "She's out cold and I've got her sleeping pills and a full bottle of aspirin. There were some other prescriptions that I didn't recognize, so I had to leave them."

  "Poole's on her way to collect the crime scene people from the town dock. They aren't going to want us hanging around while they work, and I'd be just as happy to get back on the boat."

  "Eddie'll be happy to see us."

  "We can check out his alibi."

  We stopped off at the bar only long enough to tell the Feys we'd be on the boat if anyone needed us. Anika was the only one who looked unhappy about it, but didn't say anything.

  Even a less sensitive pup than Eddie would have known something in the world had gone amiss. So, as predicted, he was full of joy when we opened up the companionway.

  As Amanda fussed around the galley I went out to the bow and called Burton Lewis. When he came on the line, I briefed him on the current circumstances, starting with the boat repair and ending with the appearance of the CSI team from the mainland.

  "I've met Sanderfreud and his wife," said Burton. "And Christian Fey. Sanderfreud was the money guy. And professional manager. Fey's the programming genius. We had a hand in the IPO. Strictly tax consulting. Terrible thing."

  "Any more on the storm?" I asked.

  "Severe thunderstorms and high winds reported in Pennsylvania. Headed your way. I was checking while we talked. How are you set for dock lines?"

  "We're good. I'll check in later. Keep your cell handy if you can."

  "Have you talked to Jackie Swaitkowski?" he asked. "She's hounding me about getting in touch with you."

  "I'll call her. Promise."

  I went back down below and sat on one of the settees so I could watch Amanda putter around the serenely beautiful galley, a natural cherry and Corian masterpiece of efficiency and craftsmanship. LED lighting fixtures in chrome and glass shades cast a gentle light on the counters and throughout the salon, the settees resplendent in tropical upholstery. Eddie, a product of scrub oaks and sea grass, looked a little out of place lying on bamboo shoots and palm fronds, though it didn't seem to bother him.

  A small built-in space heater had warmed the cabin to the point that Amanda could get away with one of my T-shirts and a baggy pair of running shorts. Her legs were lean, muscular and still dark from the recent tanning season. She'd brushed out her mass of hair, which in the last year had started to show strands of grey. She'd asked me if I cared, and I said what she did with her hair was entirely her concern. One of the things I loved most about Amanda was she preferred those kinds of answers, never leaping to subtle or sinister interpretations.

  Like Ross Semple, I was never entirely sure about Amanda. She'd done some things in the years we'd known each other to which words like subtle or sinister might easily apply. But we'd survived it all, a tribute to the powers of forgiveness, or selective amnesia, or both.

  Our connection was not a conscious thing. To me, it was an act of random happenstance, a natural phenomenon, never to be repeated. I'd decided early on that whatever Amanda was or wasn't had nothing to do with how I felt about her. Which was a vast and unquenchable longing and desire, a fantastical admixture of delight and gratitude. Not just that such things could be felt, but that she could have her own version of these feelings for me, which I knew were manifestly undeserved.

  I might have been brooding over these fancies that evening, because without turning around from the galley stove where she was pouring two cups of green tea, she said, "What."

  "What do you mean, 'what'?"

  "What're you thinking? I can hear it all the way over here."

  "How little I like green tea."

  "It's good for you, and no you weren't."

  The wind picked that moment to whistle in the rigging of the boat, a sound we'd last heard out on the water, only now more spectral and portentous in the dimly lit cabin. The boat pitched slightly to starboard, causing a pan in the galley stowage to bang against the cabinet door.

  "What does that mean?" asked Amanda, looking up at the cabin ceiling.

  "In my experience, over twenty knots of breeze."

  "Storm's a-comin'."

  "Indeed."

  "So what're you thinking?"

  "That we need to get some sleep tonight, because tomorrow could be lively."

  So, after forcing down the tea, we did just that, serenaded by the hum of the quivering shrouds that anchored the stalwart mast, and the slap of tiny, wind-borne bay waves against the bow, insistent and merciless in their need to be heard.

  (

  In the misty realm of emerging wakefulness, an oncoming storm is a pleasant thing. Especially if you're on a boat, wedged agreeably next to a naked woman in the madefor-two coffin-like enclosure called the quarter berth. There was a bigger bed in the bow called the V -berth-an apt name, contrary to nautical custom, shaped as it was in a flat-bottomed V. But I didn't like it as much. Too ample and fussy.

  It was light out when I opened my eyes and saw the dull grey sky through the nearest porthole. The boat vibrated from the steady wind and the ghosts were back cavorting in the standing rigging. I looked around the cabin for Eddie, then spotted him up on the starboard settee, on his back with his rear legs splayed and tongue lolling out of his mouth. Mr. Sea Dog, imperviou
s to the menace of natural forces.

  Recollections of the night before arrived unwanted, disrupting my unrealistically peaceful mood. Images crowded into my mind-of Myron Sanderfreud and the female cop, Derrick Hammon's studied stare, Axel Fey's inexpert use of a flashlight and Amanda leading Grace Sanderfreud up the antique stairs.

  And then I started to think about dock lines and fenders, our only points of defense against the clamor outside. A few seconds later, I was too agitated to lie still, and thought only of extracting myself without disturbing Amanda and getting on with the day.

  "Don't worry," said Amanda, reading my mind. "I've been awake for an hour. It's getting breezy out there."

  "What do you think's going on?" I asked her.

  "A storm?"

  "No. At the Black Swan."

  She settled deeper into the bed and shoved up against me.

  "Hammon and his crew came here for a reason. They were unexpected and unwelcome. As were the Sanderfreuds. The Feys are hiding something. Actually, lots of things. Axel is in la-la land, much to his father's disgust and shame, which doesn't say much about his father. 't Hooft is more than muscle and not as committed to Hammon as it might appear. And Del Rey isn't as clueless as she pretends to be. Hammon is very angry, I think at Fey, but I'm not sure. He showed little remorse over Myron's passing, only puzzlement. In fact, none of them seem as upset about Myron as they ought to be. Except for Grace, who hates Hammon, which is no great insight, since she told me so in terms that would embarrass a sailor. Wait a minute, you are a sailor, and you're never embarrassed. She thinks he killed her husband, even though he was deep in conversation with Christian Fey for at least two hours leading up to her discovering his body, which makes that a physical impossibility. When pressed, as gently as I could, she wouldn't offer up a motive other than to call Hammon a snake in designer clothing, whatever that means, along with a few other choice things. I like Trooper Poole, even though she treats me like your trashy girlfriend, and I wonder why you're avoiding Jackie Swaitkowski, who clearly needs to talk to you, since she called me on my cell and told me in terms that would embarrass a former banker that if you don't call her today you'll be forfeiting certain treasured parts of your male anatomy."