Iced Under

by Barbara Ross

  Marguerite sat back down. “Rose, I apologize for the way my family has treated your wonderful meal. Let’s finish up and then repair to the living room for a brandy.”

  Chapter 23

  We finished the meal without speaking, the forks scraping the bottoms of our pasta bowls the only sound. Paolo insisted on cleaning up. “You have done more than enough,” he said to Rose.

  Marguerite lingered in the dining room while Rose and I helped Paolo clear the table, the three of us moving from dining room to kitchen, up and down the stairs. The basement kitchen was traditional and charming, but it was a real pain in the neck.

  “There should be a dumbwaiter,” I said to Rose as we passed each other on the stairs, carrying plates, glasses, and cutlery.

  “I believe we are the dumb waiters.” She smiled.

  Paolo washed the dishes, and Rose and I escorted Marguerite into the living room. Three full snifters of brandy sat on a silver tray on the table next to Marguerite’s chair.

  “How lovely. Who did this for us?” Marguerite went for the chair and reached for the nearest glass.

  “Not me,” I answered.

  “Me either,” Rose said. “Paolo must have done it while Julia and I were clearing. Let me.” Rose picked up the tray. She passed a snifter to Marguerite and brought the tray to me.

  “I shouldn’t.” I’d had a glass of wine before dinner and another with the meal.

  “Oh, pish. Live a little,” Marguerite urged. “Before bed, drink a large glass of water to prevent a hangover. I always keep a glass by my bed for just that purpose. Don’t they teach young ladies anything anymore?”

  I took the snifter. Rose put the last one on the table next to her chair and returned the tray to its place.

  “I’m sorry about the scene in the dining room,” Marguerite said.

  I was no stranger to family drama. When your family works together every day and all depend on money coming out of the same pot, the stakes are high and the arguments can get heated. Sonny and I, in particular, had our issues. He’d resented me coming home to run the clambake and had fought every change I’d tried to make to rescue the business. I, in turn, had failed to honor his respect for tradition, including the traditions that had made the clambake successful in the first place. We’d worked it all out in the end, but our personalities were so opposite, I was certain we’d clash again in the future.

  “How is your boy?” Marguerite asked Rose.

  Rose smiled, eyes crinkling, obviously proud. “He’s a wonderful son. Kind and generous. Tall and handsome, like his father. He’s a National Merit Scholar, in the model UN. He wants to be a diplomat.”

  “Not a doctor like his parents?”

  “No, but that’s fine. He has to follow his own path.”

  “You must miss him a great deal.”

  “I do.” Rose’s smile faded. “But I’m grateful he’s old enough that I was able to spend this time with you and Hugh.”

  “We’re grateful too.” Marguerite assured her. “You’re parenting well. I envy you. Vivian is my great failure.”

  Rose and I turned our attention to her fully. I was dying to know what she thought, specifically, her failure had been, but I couldn’t think of a way to ask the question.

  Fortunately, she went on. “I don’t know where I failed her, but you see the results. My mother was strict. I rebelled and rebelled. I dropped out of my senior year of boarding school, married a man I barely knew, and went off to Spain to fight Franco. I was a fervent supporter of the republic and a sworn enemy of fascism, but as I look back, it was all about getting away from my mother.” She frowned, the web of wrinkles around her mouth deepening. “I saw things no human should ever see because I was less afraid of war than I was of telling off my mother. I tried to be more lenient with Vivian, more supportive of her dreams. You see the result.”

  I’d been the dutiful child in my family, cooperatively excelling at boarding school, college, and business school, while Livvie insisted she wanted nothing in the world but to graduate from Busman’s High, marry Sonny Ramsey, and have his baby. She flunked out of so many prep schools my parents gave up. Then, during her senior year, she announced she was pregnant. I’d seen myself as the mature one and Livvie as the stubborn, immature rebel. But now that I’d been back home in Busman’s Harbor for a year, I saw it as the reverse. At sixteen, Livvie knew exactly what she wanted, while I had floated along, molded by my parents’ expectations.

  “Sometimes a little rebellion is a good thing,” I said.

  Marguerite sighed. “I’m sure you’re right. I thought I had given her no reason, but Vivian has rebelled against me again and again, always in the same way—by marrying unsuitable men. By marrying the same unsuitable man, over and over, truth be told. Men who are parasites, every single one of them. Even my dear Tallulah’s father was a leech who hung on to its host for his entire life. We’ve paid every one of them to go away. The amount of money that’s been flushed down the drain on Vivian’s husbands is unconscionable. It’s depleted me.”

  “And now there’s Clive Humphries,” Rose said.

  “As worthless as the others. It’s a pattern I fear she cannot break. Vivian can’t be without a man, a man who pays attention and flatters her. Then, after they move into the house and marry, they can never pay her enough attention. She grows frustrated and desperate. They, in turn, stay away, or more often stray away. Soon we are paying for another divorce.”

  “You could ask the happy couple to live somewhere else,” Rose suggested.

  “I have, occasionally, though they always return. Neither Vivian nor these men have any ability to make a living.” Marguerite finished her brandy with a gulp. “The last two figured they could outlast me and inherit, but I’ve defied them by living to my great old age. I’m sure that’s what Clive means to do as well, especially with Hugh no longer with us. But I’ll never let that happen.”

  “Tallulah and Jake are a good match,” Rose pointed out. “She doesn’t seem to have her mother’s romantic impulsiveness.”

  Marguerite smiled. “They are well suited, aren’t they? They married too young—I was against it. But that’s often the way with children from unstable homes. They are driven to create family. At least Tallulah chose wisely. I thought Jake was too laid back for her, too easily pushed around, but he’s been a tremendous stabilizing influence. It does my old heart well to see them together.” Marguerite shifted in her chair, and shifted the subject as well. “Julia, it’s time for you to tell us about your branch of the family. You run a clambake on Morrow Island.”

  I nodded enthusiastically. “The Snowden Family Clambake. We have a tour boat and twice a day during the summer season we give tourists a harbor tour and then bring them to Morrow Island for a real Maine clambake.”

  “Pardon my West Coast ignorance,” Rose said. “But what is a real Maine clambake?”

  Marguerite answered, eyes twinkling. “Chowder, twin lobsters, steamed clams, corn on the cob, a potato, and an onion, cooked over a hardwood fire, and under seaweed and sailcloth tarps wet down with salt water.”

  “And an egg,” I added, a particular spin of our family.

  “An egg?” Rose asked.

  “The eggs go on top of the pile. An egg is removed and opened. If it is hard cooked, the rest of the food is done.”

  “Sounds wonderful,” Rose said.

  “You must come.” I meant it.

  “But isn’t it hard having all those strangers running all over the island?” Marguerite asked.

  “The Snowden Family Clambake is all I have ever known. It’s normal to me.” While it was true that we locked the little house on the island to guard against marauding strangers, they were usually guests who were lost and looking for the restroom, easily turned around and sent in the right direction.

  I thought about the sepia photo I’d gotten from the historical society. So much of the beauty of Morrow Island had been sacrificed over the years. Woods had replaced the rose ga
rden, and a warren of buildings, including the dining pavilion, kitchen, bar, and gift shop, occupied the great lawn. But the idea the business had destroyed the island was absurd. My parents had founded and worked their tails off at the Snowden Family Clambake in order to keep Morrow Island in the family.

  “And then you had that terrible fire last summer,” Marguerite said, while Rose nodded knowingly. “Such a shame.”

  They knew because of the scrapbook. They’d known about and dissected the public part of my family’s lives for decades, while we didn’t know they existed. My resentment boiled over. “Why did Hugh do it?” I demanded. “Why did he never contact my mother?”

  They both shook their heads. Finally, Marguerite spoke. “He never said why. I urged him to contact her many times, just as in the early years I begged him to tell his parents. He wouldn’t. He hated his parents. But that wasn’t the case with your mother.”

  “He only spoke of her with fondness,” Rose said. “With love.”

  There was a moment of quiet, each of us lost in our own thoughts. I longed to tell these lovely women that Mom had the Black Widow, and ask them about it directly, but I’d promised Detective Salinsky I wouldn’t, so I let it go.

  “Your mother should come to Hugh’s memorial reception tomorrow,” Marguerite said. “Now that he’s gone, there’s nothing to prevent the rest of us from meeting her.”

  There were several things preventing it, chief among them that I hadn’t yet told Mom Hugh had been alive all those years.

  “Julia’s sister Livvie is having a baby at any moment,” Rose explained.

  “A baby, how lovely. It makes me feel better about Hugh’s passing to see the family go on.” Marguerite raised her empty snifter. “To new life coming in. My invitation is sincere,” she said to me. “I want you to move into the house tomorrow.” She put down her glass and reached for her cane.

  “I’m overwhelmed. That’s so generous.”

  “I insist.” It seemed like she was used to getting her way when she insisted.

  “Thank you.” On the one hand, I’d be moving into a house that might hold a murderer. On the other, staying with the family might get me the information I needed about who had sent the Black Widow, and who owned it. I couldn’t turn that down. “I’ll bring my things in the morning.”

  Chapter 24

  Back in my hotel room, I stared at my phone. No messages from Chris, which galled me after his remark that he had no reason to stay in Maine in the winter. I imagined him, drinking beer at a noisy tropical bar full of scantily clad women, while I froze my patooties off and dug through the mother of all family dysfunction.

  I shook myself out of my self-pity and did what I had to do. I called my mother. The time had come to tell her what was really going on. I couldn’t explain to her how she owned the Black Widow if I didn’t explain whom she’d inherited it from, or how Hugh had been alive all these years she’d believed he was dead. The weight of the secret was unsettling me. The longer I kept it, the more I was a coconspirator like the rest of them, perpetuating this awful hoax on my mother.

  “Mom, it’s me. Where are you?”

  “I’m at Livvie’s.” In the background, I heard the sound of the giant television Sonny’s dad had given the family. My sister hated it. “She’s resting.” Mom answered my question, even though I hadn’t asked it.

  “Good. Mom, you might want to go to your room and shut the door for this conversation.”

  “Julia, you’re making me nervous.” The noise of the TV receded. I heard a door close and pictured Mom sitting on the miserable pullout couch in Livvie’s guest room. “Go ahead.”

  I took a deep breath and told her everything. From the moment I told her about Hugh, she cried—great, heaving sobs echoing through the air, transmitted satellite to satellite.

  “Why?” she asked over and over. “Why, why, why?”

  I waited for her to compose herself. “I don’t know why. I’m not sure anyone does. The way Marguerite tells it, his disappearance was something of an accident.”

  “An accident? How could anything like that have been an accident?”

  “He told her he had an argument with a girl and hid on the boat. Do you remember an argument, or a girl, for that matter?”

  Mom didn’t say anything. Her intermittent sniffing told me she was trying to get control. “No,” she finally said. “Nothing like that.” Then she dissolved again. “I don’t understand.”

  I told her what Marguerite had said about Hugh’s hatred for his parents. I reassured her that both Paolo and Rose said he talked of her fondly and often at the end. I didn’t mention the scrapbook. It was too obsessive and creepy.

  That he remembered her in his final days brought back the tears. “I don’t understand why he would have done this. I loved him like a brother.”

  I talked to her until she calmed down. I told her about the town house that had been owned by her ancestors and described the family members, giving the best spin I could.

  After we hung up, I was remorseful about the pain I’d caused her. You didn’t cause it, Hugh did, I told myself. There had been no avoiding the conversation.

  It was only then I realized Mom had not asked one thing about the necklace.

  * * *

  I was too keyed up to sleep. I fired up my laptop and searched for information about Clive Humphries. He had a profile on LinkedIn, though I didn’t recognize the names of five most recent employers he’d listed on his résumé. I entered a couple of the company names in a search engine and found nothing. The GimmeThat! App had a web site, but, as I expected, it was a mile wide, an inch deep, and said nothing.

  Rose, I knew from my previous searches, was exactly what she seemed, a well-respected doctor in San Francisco. I realized belatedly I’d forgotten to ascertain Vivian’s last name immediately prior to her marriage to Clive, so I figured I’d start at the beginning. I typed “Vivian Morales,” and was lucky enough to score a full wedding article from the Globe. Vivian’s marriage to husband number one had been big news back in 1981. Then came number two, then three, who was presumably Tallulah’s father. I wondered if he was still in Tallulah’s life, until I found an obituary for him in 2011. After him came wedding announcements four, five, and six, though smaller and smaller notices.

  Tallulah Spencer was easy to find on the Internet. She and her accompanist, Jake Spencer, performed at clubs in Boston and Cambridge as well as other places around New England, just as Rose had said.

  So far, I hadn’t learned anything helpful, but I decided to keep going, just to check all the boxes. I typed “Paolo Paolini Boston,” and got nothing. Absolutely nothing. Would a hospice nurse necessarily have a web presence? It was hard to avoid nowadays, unless the obscurity was intentional. Perhaps he was undocumented. Or he had some other, more sketchy reason for staying in the shadows. I’d make an effort to find out more in the morning.

  * * *

  I climbed into bed and closed my eyes, but sleep didn’t come. I felt terrible about what I’d had to tell my mother. It was so hurtful. Hugh’s disappearance had haunted her life. Why had he done that to her? The question pinged around my brain. Stop it, I finally ordered. You need to sleep. Tomorrow is going to be another long day.

  Just as I drifted off, my chest contracted, as if it was being squeezed by a giant’s hand. I gulped for air, unable to breathe.

  I’d had panic attacks before. Toward the end of my career in venture capital, they’d become almost chronic, though I’d only had two since I’d moved back to Busman’s Harbor. But something was off about this one. I couldn’t get a breath, but my heart wasn’t racing, my brain wasn’t darting off in a million anxiety-filled directions. A massive lethargy overcame me. I didn’t have enough energy left to panic.

  I focused on what was happening. Had I suddenly developed some kind of asthma? An allergy to the feathers the hotel claimed were in my pillows and comforter? Or was it something I’d eaten or drunk? I catalogued the amount I’d had to
drink. It was a lot for me, far more than usual, but I’d consumed it over hours, and I hadn’t felt drunk or even tipsy on my walk back to the hotel or anytime since.

  I couldn’t get my mind off those full snifters of brandy. Rose had concluded Paolo had filled them, and it was likely he had, slipping into the living room while Marguerite was in the dining room and Rose and I climbed up and down the stairs clearing the table.

  Paolo was a stranger in the house. He didn’t exist on the web. Could he have put something in my drink? But why?

  I worried about Marguerite and Rose. What if their drinks were also doctored? I debated whether to call. A phone call to the Marlborough Street house in the middle of the night would distress everyone, and I wasn’t sure what was happening to me. What would I say? My mind was so muddled, I couldn’t think it through.

  Exerting an effort, I raised my arm off the bed and picked up the receiver of the hotel phone. I waited, hand poised over the operator button, ready to sound the alarm if I felt I was going to pass out.

  The feeling like I had a steel band around my chest, while the rest of my muscles had turned to jelly, continued, but it didn’t get worse. The minutes ticked by, then turned to a quarter hour, then an hour. Finally around 2:00 AM, the constriction eased. I took a breath, then a deeper breath. The sensation had been like none I’d ever felt before.

  I pushed to a sitting position, then swung my heavy legs over the side of the bed. I opened the curtains and looked at the cityscape. Boston was quiet, much quieter than New York would have been at the same hour, but there were cars and cabs and delivery trucks in the street below. Across the Charles, headlights and taillights moved along a curving road. I walked the attack off, growing stronger and steadier. Convinced whatever had happened was over, I picked up my book and read until my eyes finally closed, around three.

  Chapter 25

  The lobby was nearly deserted in the morning. The clerk assured me Chris’s truck could stay in the hotel garage for an extortionate fee until I was ready to leave the city. I wheeled my carry-on-sized bag out onto the sidewalk.