Death in a Cold Hard Light

by Francine Mathews

  Beep. A woman’s voice, this time.

  “Hello?”

  “Hey… I was afraid you were out.”

  (Another man, different from the first, his voice slightly ragged where the other was casual.)

  “No, I was in the tub.”

  “Alone?”

  “Of course alone. Where are you calling from?”

  “The Club Car.”

  “What happened to Cambridge?”

  “I came back early. Look, I need to see you. Right away. It’s urgent.”

  A pause, while the woman considered. “You missed me that much?”

  “Stop kidding around. It’s about your husband, and it’s serious. I’ve got enough dirt on the bastard to hang him high, ha—”

  Beep.

  White noise.

  …to hang him high, hang him for good? Is that what he was going to say before the machine cut him off?

  The white noise went on for a long time. Merry glanced up at Clarence, hit the FAST-FORWARD button, then pushed PLAY. More white noise.

  “Sounds like that’s it.”

  Clarence sat down heavily on the edge of her desk. “Yahr tellin’ me somebody cared enough to send that to the bottom o’ the hahrbah?”

  “Yes,” Merry said slowly, “and I think I know who.”

  “You recognized the voices?”

  “Didn’t you?”

  Clare simply looked at her.

  “The last guy was Matt Bailey,” she said, as though it were obvious, and rewound the tape.

  “I think what happened,” Merry said to her father, “is that the machine picked up after two rings, right as the woman got to the phone. Most of them do that, once there are messages already recorded. The machine assumes nobody’s home, and answers more quickly. So the woman didn’t quite get there in time.”

  She and Clarence were standing in John Folger’s office now, the cassette in a recorder on the Chief’s desk. He had listened to the fragmentary words twice through.

  “Uh-huh,” her father said. “I’m not an idiot, Meredith. What’s your point?”

  “So her whole conversation was recorded. She might not have known that until the final beep, when the machine clicked off. Then, in the middle of this intimate conversation with poor Bailey, she realizes it’s all on tape.”

  “So why doesn’t she run downstairs and rewind the tape? Erase the whole thing, if it’s such a calamity?”

  “I’ve thought about that. Somebody else got there first.”

  John Folger scowled. “I’m not following you. We know she was alone.”

  “No. We know she thought she was alone. What if someone came in while she was running the bathwater—someone she never heard? Her husband, the one Bailey mentioned. Maybe he was the guy with the wine, who was going to be a little late. He said he’d be back in half an hour, and we have no idea how much time elapsed between the first message and the third. He’s standing downstairs, humming to himself as he unpacks his wine bottles—and then he hears the phone ring. Hears the machine pick up.”

  “And hears the conversation broadcast by the recorder,” Clarence finished.

  There was a moment of pained silence.

  “Depending on what the conversation really meant,” the Chief said slowly, “that might have been unfortunate.”

  “Indeed,” Merry said cheerfully. “It might have been a disaster. Our unknown guy could have marched upstairs and yanked his wife off the phone, demanding an explanation. Or he could have quietly picked up the receiver, and listened to the rest of the call. Or maybe he ignored it, because it wasn’t important—only then why did the tape end up in the harbor?”

  “You think he took the cassette out of the recorder while the woman was still on the phone,” her father said slowly, “and eventually dumped it in the sea. That makes absolutely no sense.”

  “I don’t yet understand why he did that,” Merry conceded, “but for now, it’s my theory, and I’m sticking with it.”

  “I’ll be interested to know when you’ve got something more like facts, Meredith. So far, this is a bunch of cockamamie bullshit.”

  “Or would be, if the guy on the other end of the line wasn’t Matt Bailey,” she observed distantly.

  “I think perhaps I oughter be goin’,” Clarence murmured, and propelled himself to the door. The Folgers’ battles were legendary around the Nantucket force.

  Merry waved distractedly at the crime scene chief’s back, then pulled up one of the two captain’s chairs facing her father’s desk and sat herself down. “Come on, Dad. Time to come clean. What was Matt Bailey’s phone number doing in Jay Santorski’s pocket? And how did Bailey get mixed up with a jealous man’s wife?”

  “I know nothing about Matt Bailey’s love life,” John retorted stiffly.

  “But you agree that his disappearance takes on an interesting complexion in the light of this tape,” she persisted. “Who knows—Bailey might be the next thing we dredge up from the harbor bottom! And what was he doing in Cambridge, anyway? Vacation time? A conference with the ex-wife about little Ryan? Or was it something to do with his latest drug sting operation?”

  John Folger’s face assumed the wooden look Merry remembered from Friday night’s pie-eating session at Tattle Court. She knew, then, that even the tape’s revelations had no power to jolt him into speech. That suddenly, she lost her patience.

  “Matt was running an op with Santorski—wasn’t he?”

  “Where the hell did you come up with that idea?”

  “Oh, for God’s sake, Dad—”

  “Nothing on this tape would suggest the slightest connection to Santorski’s drowning.”

  “The cassette was found on the harbor bottom, in a bag with a hypodermic needle! Jay Santorski had needle marks in his arm!”

  “That’s neither here nor there. What I just heard was a personal conversation. It can have nothing to do with Bailey’s work.”

  “What was Bailey’s work, anyway? I can’t find a trace of it in his office. Even his filing cabinets are clean.”

  Her father’s eyes dropped to his desk, and he made a little play of aligning his blotter. “It’s highly unprofessional, Meredith, to crossexamine your chief about another detective’s caseload.”

  Merry’s breath caught in her throat. “Jay Santorski is dead, Dad. Dead. Bailey’s nowhere to be found. We’re not talking about a caseload. We’re talking about a disaster.”

  “That boy fell into the basin and drowned,” her father replied doggedly. “His death has nothing to do with me.”

  With me. There it was—a denial of responsibility, a desperate shifting of blame. That swiftly, Merry knew her father’s guilt. She felt his corrosive fear. And worse, she recognized his cowardice.

  He was using her to save himself. The knowledge terrified and enraged her. She took a step back from the desk.

  “You called me home as a blind.”

  Her father looked at her then. A self-righteous stranger stared out of his beloved blue eyes. “I never asked you to meddle in Bailey’s business, Meredith.”

  “No. You asked me to play dumb. The one thing I’d never expect from you.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  Merry left her father without a backward glance, and ran upstairs to call Howie Seitz. He picked up on the third ring; she heard the roar of Patriots football in the background.

  “I need you to check the airport passenger lists for Bailey’s name,” she told him tersely. “And the ferry offices. Find out whether anybody answering his description left the island Thursday.”

  “Okay.” Seitz’s voice was reluctant. “But there’s a million people answering his description, Mere.”

  Medium build, clean-shaven face, brown eyes and hair. Howie was right: it was hopeless.

  “I’m putting out an APB for his car.”

  “Should have done that a couple of days ago. Chief know about all this?”

  “No.”

  “Okay. Ill get on it, Mere.”


  “Thanks, Seitz.”

  She cradled the receiver and looked around for her keys. In all the years she had known him, Matt Bailey had never kept a conquest to himself. If anybody knew the name of the woman on the tape, it would be Bailey’s friends—the Potts brothers, Tim and Phil.

  An ancient Land Cruiser, fenders rusted, guarded the Pottses’ closed garage door. Huddled shapes outlined against the rear windshield suggested dive tanks and fishing rods. Tim and Phil liked to surf-cast for blues out on Smith Point.

  Merry parked the Explorer on the verge of Liberty Road and picked her way across the Pottses’ saturated lawn. A curtain twitched at the front window, and then Tim’s koala-bear face appeared at the storm door.

  “Detective Folger,” he said coolly as he pushed it open a few inches and leaned toward her. “To what do we owe this honor?”

  From the sound of his voice, it was more like an intrusion.

  “How are you, Tim?” Merry asked.

  “Fine.” A neutral shading to the word, pregnant with anticipation. “Anything wrong?”

  “I need to talk to you.”

  “Come on in.”

  She followed him into the Pottses’ darkened hall and glanced around, blinking. Blue light flowed from a television screen in a room to the left; Merry heard the unmistakable accent of Arnold Schwarzenegger.

  “We rented a movie for Ryan,” Tim explained. “Ryan Bailey—Matt’s son. He’s parked in front of it with a bag of chips and a can of soda.”

  An action film would hardly have been her choice for comforting an abandoned little boy, but maybe guys understood these things better. Merry would have rented something from Disney, and discovered too late that Ryan had outgrown it.

  “Want to talk in here?” Tim stood uneasily in the doorway of the room to the right of the hall. Merry was hardly in the habit of paying house calls around the force, and it occurred to her that this might be a bad thing. Maybe she should extend herself, and socialize more with people from work. The notion made her inexplicably depressed.

  “Is Phil around?” she asked, taking a seat on a lumpy couch.

  “Went into town.” Tim remained standing, his arms folded across his chest. He hadn’t forgiven her, it seemed, for yesterday’s rebuke about Paul Winslow.

  “Listen, Tim—I won’t waste your time. I want to talk about Bailey.”

  Tim looked over his shoulder as though she had shouted abuse at the top of her lungs. “Try to keep your voice down, Mere. We don’t want to upset the little guy. He’s worried enough as it is.”

  “Sorry. Are you … worried, Tim?”

  “About Matt?” Something flickered across his face-anger or wariness, Merry couldn’t be sure. “Somebody has to be. Everyone else is acting like it’s perfectly normal that the guy drops off the face of the earth.”

  “I know. But the Chief said you wanted to wait a few days before calling Bailey’s ex-wife.”

  “I figured that’s what Matt would want. Jen might use this as an excuse to take Ryan away from him—and that would kill Matt.”

  His vehemence surprised Merry. She had assumed that Matt Bailey was incapable of strong feeling. His relationships never lasted more than a few weeks. But perhaps a child was different—easier to love.

  “Do you know where he is, Tim?”

  “If I did—”

  “I’d be the last person you’d tell.”

  “Again, I have to think of what Matt would want.”

  “Meaning, that his feeling for me ranks somewhere below his ex-wife.”

  Tim didn’t bother to answer her directly. “What do you want, Merry?”

  “Was Bailey running an undercover drug sting operation with Jay Santorski?”

  Tim flinched, and looked away from her, toward the room’s single window. “I don’t know.”

  “At least tell me why Santorski had Bailey’s phone number in his pocket when he died.”

  “Did he?”

  Merry nodded. “And Bailey left town the same night Jay went into the harbor.”

  “Are you suggesting Matt killed him?” A flare of anger.

  Merry tried to answer calmly. “No. But I’m beginning to wonder why no one else does. Including the Chief. I have to assume it’s because the joke’s on me. And all of you know exactly where Matt is, and why.”

  “I haven’t the faintest idea what happened that night,” Tim said, pointing a finger at her for emphasis, “or why Matt ran. But maybe he doesn’t want to be found.”

  “Look. Don’t lie to me.” Merry’s voice was taut with frustration and anger. “I’ve had enough of lying. I could dissect a corpse in Bailey’s office, it’s so clean. Not a shred of paper to show what he might have been doing, or where he’s gone. Somebody tidied up after him. Was it you? Or the Chief?”

  “It wasn’t me.”

  “This is starting to look like a cover-up, Tim.”

  “I’m not much interested in threats, Mere. You should know that by now. I’d better get back to Ryan.”

  “Wait—” Merry held up her hand. “Protect Bailey if you must. I don’t care. I’ll figure it out eventually.”

  “You always do. No matter how late in the game, and regardless of the cost.”

  The sarcasm in his voice was like a lash. He was thinking, Merry knew, of the people who had died last spring, and the knowledge made her flush as though she had suddenly been stripped naked.

  “Tim—I need your help. We found a tape on the harbor bottom, not far from the jetties where Santorski’s body was. It’s a recording of Bailey’s voice. From an answering machine.”

  He stopped halfway to the open door. “Bailey’s on tape? With jay?”

  So they had known one another. “Not Jay. A woman. I thought you might be able to identify her voice.” Merry reached for her purse.

  “You have it here?”

  She nodded.

  Tim looked suddenly wary. “Does your dad know about this, Merry?”

  “Why do you ask?”

  “You know why. I’m not about to get between you two.”

  “He’s already heard the tape.”

  “Did he tell you to play it for me?”

  “No,” Merry said unwillingly. “I thought of that on my own. You and Phil are Bailey’s best friends on the force. You’d be likely to know if he was seeing anybody.”

  “He wasn’t. At least, not that I heard.”

  “You couldn’t prove it by this tape.”

  Tim looked at her narrowly. “You think it has something to do with his disappearance?”

  “Yes.”

  “I don’t even begin to understand what’s going on, Mere.”

  “Neither do I.” She pulled her microrecorder out of her purse and pressed the PLAY button. “I just want you to listen to this.”

  Beeps and voices. Tim leaned over the recorder.

  “It’s the third message,” she told him.

  “Hey,” the disembodied voice began, “I was afraid you were out”

  “No. I was in the tub.”

  To Merry’s disappointment, Tim’s face showed nothing like recognition at the sound of the unknown woman’s voice.

  “Alone?”

  “Of course alone…”

  “Tim! That’s my dad! Did he call? Where is he?”

  Ryan Bailey, standing in the doorway, his thin face filled with hope.

  “I forgot to shut the door, Mere,” Tim said guiltily. He stood up and reached for the boy. “It’s not your dad, Ryan. It’s just a tape.”

  “How’d you get it?”

  Tim looked helplessly at Merry.

  “Ryan,” she said, coming to a swift decision, “do you think you could listen to this all the way through? It might help us find your dad.”

  “Sure.” Ryan shrugged, trying to hide his disappointment. “But he’s just talking to Hannah.”

  “Hannah?”

  The name jolted through Merry like an electric shock. There couldn’t be two women with that name involved in
this mess.

  “Dad really likes her a lot. I saw him kiss her once, when they didn’t know I was there.”

  I’ve got enough dirt … to hang him high. Of course.

  Merry studied the twelve-year-old intently She had to ask, just to be sure. “Do you know Hannah’s last name, Ryan?”

  “It’s Moore,” Tim Potts said, his voice incredulous. “Hannah Moore, the biologist. She’s married to that real estate guy who lives out in Pocomo. But how she knows Bailey, I can’t begin to tell you. Hannah’s way out of his league.”

  Hannah Moore swept her long black hair away from her face and into a knot at the crown of her head. She secured it with a pair of number-two lead pencils and then bent over the microscope in front of her. Her lips moved soundlessly as she counted something. Then she straightened, seized a third pencil, and scribbled numbers on a pad.

  “Got it nailed down? Got it all figured out?” her husband asked, from his position in the doorway.

  She looked up, her face expressionless, and met Charles Moore’s eyes. Then she looked back down at her notepad and continued writing.

  In the first year of their marriage, Sunday had been reserved for play. They had taken long walks over the moors together; had browsed for books in the local shops; had bicycled to the old military bunker at Tom Nevers Head, and eaten sumptuous brunches at Chanticleer. All that had changed with Hannah’s growing obsession for her work. Now she spent more hours in her Quonset huts than she did in the house. It had been a long time, Charles thought, since she had greeted him with a smile. Much less run to throw her arms around him with helpless joy.

  But helpless joy had never been much in Hannah’s line. He would have settled for grudging lust.

  He wandered around the interior of the lab his money had built, disturbing piles of paperwork and fingering the labeled slides. He peered into tanks with blatant ignorance, and stirred the bubbling waters with an idle fingertip. He did it deliberately, hoping to provoke.

  “What exactly do you want, Charles?” she burst out, finally, at the end of her short patience. He whirled to face her.

  “A return on my investment,” he said. “Some gain for expenditures expended.”

  Silence. She set down her pencil.