Death in a Cold Hard Light

by Francine Mathews

  “Of what? The police?”

  Paul shook his head violently.

  Jorie’s stomach knotted and she glanced around desperately. None of the other kids was interested in the sight of her talking to her boyfriend, even if their decision to sit on the wet surface of the parking lot looked a little odd.

  And then Jorie saw Will, standing like a statue in the midst of a dispersing crowd of their friends. His eyes were locked on her face, and his expression was unreadable.

  “Don’t move,” she said fiercely to Paul; but he was rocking back and forth, arms folded over his abdomen, and his eyes were closed again.

  She ran, as quickly as her ill-fitting clogs would allow, and grabbed Will’s arm. “It’s Paul.”

  “No kidding. I had hoped it was his better twin.”

  “He’s really sick, Will. He says he’s been trying to quit. I think it’s killing him. And he won’t let me go for a doctor.” She was pleading, as though he had already refused her what she had not asked. “He says he’s too afraid.”

  “Of what? A hospital?”

  “The cops, I think.”

  Will’s dark eyes stared unblinkingly into hers, as though he could see through everything and always would. He started to say something, then dismissed the thought with a grimace and walked away. Jorie clattered behind him, fighting a sharp spurt of tears.

  “Hey, buddy,” Will said softly, and hunkered down near Paul’s face. “Let’s get you on your feet.”

  “Take me to my truck.”

  “Why? You have something you need in there?”

  The sudden harshness in Will’s voice was like a slap across the face.

  Paul’s eyes flew open and Jorie saw the anger blaze—anger not just at Will, or at her, or at the desperation of his choices—but anger at himself. In such a mood, she realized, he could be dangerous.

  “Come on.” Will grasped Paul’s arm and lifted him bodily from the macadam. That single act told Jorie all she needed to know about Paul’s weakness; a few months earlier, Will could never have gotten close enough to lay a hand on him. “We’re going to my car.”

  “Where are you taking him?” Jorie asked.

  “To the hospital, of course.”

  “NO!” Paul flailed wildly. “I won’t go there, you bastard! They’ll tell the police!” He broke free of Will’s grasp.

  “Please, Will,” Jorie urged. “There must be somewhere else.”

  The three of them stood for a moment, Paul swaying and ashen.

  “I suppose we can’t take him home to his dad.”

  “That would be the same as taking him to the hospital.”

  “And your mom would do the same.”

  Jorie nodded miserably.

  “So would mine. But we can’t just dump him at his place on Orange Street. He needs someone to take care of him.”

  “What about …” Jorie searched for possibilities, and discarded most of them. It had to be an adult, but one who wouldn’t interfere. “What about Hannah?”

  “Hannah?! She wouldn’t take care of anybody! You know that!”

  “But she wouldn’t turn Paul in to the police, either,” Jorie reasoned. “And you and I could watch him in one of the huts until he’s okay. We can say we’re over there for our senior project. Nobody’ll think twice.”

  “You’re probably right,” Will said thoughtfully. “But will Hannah let him stay?”

  “I hope so.” Jorie reached for Paul’s arm and felt him slump against her heavily. “Come on, Will—Hannah’s our only hope.”

  • • •

  But it was Charles Moore who met them in the driveway of Aqua-Vital. They had forgotten about Charles.

  He was driving out in his dented blue Mercedes, the top down despite the cold, and a slight breeze ruffled his silver hair. He hit the brakes as he pulled abreast of Will’s truck.

  “Hey, kids! ‘Fraid you’re out of luck. Hannah’s gone out. You don’t usually come on Mondays, do you?”

  “No,” Will said. “We thought we’d just stop by and talk. But that’s okay, we’ll see Hannah Friday.”

  Moore smiled and looked beyond him. “Is that Paul? Why aren’t you out on the water earning a living, young man?”

  This sally was greeted with silence.

  “Paul’s not feeling well,” Jorie volunteered hurriedly from her place between the two boys. “So it’s probably good that Hannah’s not here. We can get him—home now.”

  “What is it? The flu?”

  Paul didn’t respond. He drifted in something like a stupor.

  Charlies Moore set his parking brake carefully and thrust open his door. Jorie drew an involuntary breath; where they rested in her lap, her hands balled into fists.

  He walked around to Paul’s side and leaned in the open window. “He looks pretty bad. Maybe you should bring him into the house.”

  “That’s not necessary,” Will said quickly “We’ll get him home.”

  The good-humored ease of Moore’s expression hardened into something more acute. Concern? Or comprehension? “Has he been able to tell you … what’s wrong?”

  “Not really.”

  The man’s gaze shifted slowly from Paul to Will. Then he nodded slightly. “Home’s probably the best thing. I’ll tell Hannah you stopped by.”

  Back in the Mercedes, he smiled at them jauntily. “Go ahead and turn around after I clear the drive.”

  Will watched in his rearview mirror until the Mercedes had shot past them toward the Polpis road; then he looked at Jorie. “What do we do now?”

  “We could hide him in one of the huts. Hannah’ll be back soon. We could ask her then.” She spoke quietly, as though her voice might disturb the boy beside her; but from the look on Paul’s face, he was beyond the reach of words.

  “Mr. Moore wouldn’t like it if he knew.”

  “Maybe he won’t know.”

  “He lives here, Jorie. He’ll know. Besides, Hannah’s hardly an angel of mercy. We were stupid to think this would work.”

  “So what now? Paul looks really bad. What if he dies, Will?”

  “He won’t die. He might wish he had, by the time this is over, but … how about a hotel?”

  “We’d need a credit card.”

  “I haven’t got one.”

  “I could take my mom’s, and forge her signature,” Jorie offered doubtfully.

  “No way. Besides, she’d get the bill. And then what would you tell her?”

  They were both silent, and Will’s front teeth worried at his lip. “Well have to take him to Peter’s.”

  “Who’s Peter?”

  “Peter Mason. He’s a friend of mine. Rafe works for him. It’s only five minutes away.”

  “You mean, Mason Farms?” Jorie’s voice was incredulous. “He’s the guy who’s going to marry the cop, right?”

  “Uh-huh. But Peter’ll help. He’s not like a parent, and he always knows what to do. It’s got to be better than taking Paul back to his place. He’ll only get sicker there.”

  “I think this idea sucks,” Jorie said firmly. “Peter’ll tell his girlfriend, and Paul will never forgive me.”

  Will glanced at her over his shoulder, then eased the truck’s fender toward a stone wall that ran along the drive. “That’s the best news I’ve heard all year. Then maybe he’ll leave you alone.”

  “You’d like that, wouldn’t you?” she shot back. “You don’t give a shit about Paul.”

  The dark blue eyes stayed fixed on the road. “But I care a lot about you, Jor.”

  She swallowed hard, aghast at the surge of joy that greeted his words; and then remembered the other boy beside her. “I wouldn’t have asked for your help if I’d thought you were going to hand Paul over to the cops, Will.”

  “Peter isn’t even home. He’s gone to New York and he gave Rebecca the week off.”

  “Rebecca’s the girlfriend? The cop?”

  “The housekeeper. The place’ll be empty.”

  “So how will we get in
?”

  “I know where Peter keeps the spare key.”

  Jorie mulled this over, then shook her head. “It’s too risky. We can’t go with you. You’ve got to take us back to town.”

  “Where, exactly?”

  “Anywhere!”

  “The middle of Main Street? The graveyard? What?” Will shook his head. “I can’t do that, Jor. You’ll never be able to handle him alone. I’m sorry, but we’re going to Pete’s. You’ve just got to trust me.”

  Trust, Jorie reflected, had never been very important to Paul.

  Matt Bailey had gone to Cambridge, Merry learned from his file, because his unnamed contact had sent him there. The heroin traveling through Nantucket’s drug underground had its origins in a network of enterprising Dominican Republicans, long-established in the multi-racial fringe of the university town. The unnamed source’s girlfriend—a promising young Harvard student and Crimson reporter—had been researching the story. She had befriended the youngsters pushing drugs on the Cambridge streets. She had followed the network from its end point in the ghetto, to some of the more rarified neighborhoods of Boston; she had identified the primary dealers, who were anything but Dominican, although quite often Republicans.

  And she had been about to publish her piece when she had died quite tragically, the victim of her own fascination. A heroin overdose.

  “And her name was Katia,” Merry murmured to herself, “although Bailey may never have known it. But how does the road lead from Cambridge to Nantucket?”

  She read on. And picked up the trail near the back of the slim file, on a typed list that detailed four purchases of heroin. The buyer had been Margot St. John. The dealer, Charles Moore.

  It was all there; dates, amounts, and purchase prices. Jay must have observed the sales, Merry thought, or wormed the facts out of the girl; but he seemed never to have bought any drugs from Moore himself. That, Merry supposed, had been intended for another day, with a police entourage in attendance. Jay’s life had ended first. Much as the unknown Katia’s had done.

  Who betrayed him? Margot St. John, in a moment of incautious talk?

  Or Bailey himself, during that taped conversation with Charles Moore’s wife? Merry was inclined to award Bailey the responsibility; an error of this magnitude was entirely in keeping with the course of his life.

  But the answer would have to be found outside the green arms of the official folder. It ended abruptly two nights before Santorski’s death, when presumably Bailey had departed for Cambridge.

  Two items of interest remained. One was a succinct history of Charles Moore’s life. The other was a list of contacts Bailey hoped to debrief during his trip to the mainland.

  Moore had deep roots in the Cambridge community. A trust-fund orphan, according to Bailey’s notes, he was raised by a patrician aunt and her banker husband in a large house not far from Harvard Square. His resume included St. Paul’s and Harvard; a minor post at the uncle’s bank; and a brief stint in Washington during the Vietnam War. At the age of twenty-five, with canny foresight, he had purchased a quantity of slum properties in the more degraded sectors of Cambridge. The gentrification of the seventies and eighties had done well by Charles Moore. In the early nineties, he had retired with Hannah to the house in Pocomo, which had been in the Moore family for three generations.

  Hannah’s maiden name, Merry was pleased to note, was an unceremonious and pedestrian Steinmetz. She was Moore’s second wife; his first marriage, to an Irene Lewis, had ended in divorce only a few months previous to the Nantucket move.

  Hannah the Home-Wrecker, Merry thought. The appellation suited her.

  But a swift survey of Bailey’s Cambridge contacts banished Hannah Moore’s specter to the fringe of Merry’s mind. For another woman’s name leaped clamorously off the page. Catherine Purcell. Catherine Purcell, whose Cambridge phone number had drowned in Santorski’s pocket Thursday night. Catherine Purcell, in whose Baxter Road house Margot St. John was brutally murdered.

  Catherine Purcell—whom Bailey identified, in his rapid, looping script, as Charles Moore’s widowed aunt.

  It made sense, Merry thought, that Moore’s clothes were still hanging in the house’s closets. He probably even possessed a set of keys.

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  “Lookin’ for me?” Owen Harley shouted across the boat basin’s chop.

  Merry jumped involuntarily and slapped Bailey’s operational file closed. “Owen. Hello.”

  He guided the scallop boat carefully between the bevy of wooden dories still bobbing in the shallows off Easy Street, and moored up at his private slip. He looked more grizzled than ever this afternoon, with the hood of a dirty gray sweatshirt pulled up over his ears. His face, too, was weary unto death. A bad day for the delivery of ill tidings. Merry summoned her flagging courage; the duty had to be faced.

  Harley cut the engine. “Got news about Jay?”

  “Sort of.” She frowned involuntarily.

  “So do I, as it happens. C’mon up.”

  Merry followed him within, and took up her familiar position before Owen Harley’s million-dollar view. She drank in the emptiness of the ragged channel as it curved past Brant Point, and tried not to remember Margot St. John’s pleading dead eyes. They had followed her relentlessly throughout the day.

  Harley showered and exchanged his working clothes for a set of comfortable black sweats. Their monochrome drape lent a peculiar elegance to his weathered frame, as though its angles and crags had been willed to him by Papa Hemingway. In the background, Billie Holiday sang the blues.

  But Merry turned away from the window’s peace. “I’ve got bad news. It’s Margot.”

  “Margot?”

  They had never actually discussed the fact of Margot—either her occasional tenancy of his sofabed, or the tension she had caused between Owen and Jay. In fact, as far as Merry and Harley were concerned, Margot might never have existed.

  “Someone killed her last night.”

  He lifted a hand to his face, where it hovered uncertainly for a few seconds before dropping again to his side. Then he turned and slumped into a chair.

  “I’m sorry,” Merry said.

  No answer. Owen Harley rocked forward, as though he had been kicked in the abdomen. Merry reached out a hand, then withdrew it without touching him.

  “There’s no good way to say it. But I thought I ought to come myself, instead of telling you over the phone.”

  “How long?”

  Merry didn’t understand him. “How long … what?”

  “How long has she been dead?”

  “We’re not sure. We think since late last night, around midnight, perhaps.”

  “Oh, God.” The rocking ceased, and he came to rest with his chest against his knees, arms locked around them as though he were afraid of hypothermia. “I saw her on Saturday.”

  “Where?”

  “At the house. I went out there to talk to her.” Harley looked up at Merry, his face more terrible for its lack of tears. “I told her to get out.”

  “Of what?”

  “This—mess.”

  Merry looked around and found a chair. She pulled it close to Harley’s huddled form and sat down.

  “When you told me about the needle marks on Jay’s arm, I was afraid. He was close to Margot, and Margot was an addict. I wanted her to leave town before you people caught up with her.”

  “When we talked on Friday, you never mentioned her name.”

  “I know.”

  “You should have. We might have been able to protect her. Margot wasn’t the person we wanted.”

  “Don’t say that, damn you! Nothing could protect Margot. She was a moth caught in a flame. It’s amazing she lived this long!”

  Merry shoved a hand through her blond bangs, sticky with humidity, and sighed. “Look. I’m sorry. That was unfair. But it makes me crazy, Owen, when I’m an hour too late. I went to talk to Margot last night, and all I found was a body.”

  “You
found her?”

  “Yes.”

  He went very still. “How—did they do it?”

  “They?”

  “He. She. It.”

  “Margot was hit on the back of the skull with a sharp metal object. She probably never even felt any pain.” Merry kept the fact of the tomato can out of her story; it lacked dignity, and could have no significance for Owen anyway. “The kitchen was pretty torn apart, as though her killer was searching for something.”

  “Heroin,” he said bleakly. “Of course.”

  “Was Margot likely to have had a supply of it in the house?”

  “No, She lived from fix to fix. Bought it when she had the money.”

  Merry asked the next question more from curiosity than a need for confirmation. “Do you know where she got her drugs, Owen?”

  He put his head in his hands, and his shoulders began to heave.

  She went over to the small galley kitchen. The mugs, she remembered, were stored in the cupboard to the left of the sink. She filled the kettle with water and searched about for tea. By the time she had found it, Owen Harley had recovered enough to sit up. But his eyes were fixed on the gray line where sea met cloudy sky, miles beyond his window. Merry doubted whether he even saw the knife of a sail moving slowly against the horizon.

  The Billie Holiday record—an actual LP, not a remixed CD recording—came to an end. In the silence, the teakettle’s whistle shrilled.

  “I don’t know why I’m grieving,” he murmured at last. “Maybe now she’s at peace.”

  “She wasn’t before?”

  “Only when she was high.” He closed his eyes. “What a waste of a life. And what a life to waste.”

  “You loved her, didn’t you?”

  He nodded dismissively. “Oh, yeah. She was one of the rare ones. Torn by guilt, and by memories she couldn’t silence—but in those few moments when her mind and body soared, Margot was like nothing else on this earth.”

  “Did she know how you felt about her?”

  “Probably not. I never, ever, touched her. And I think she grew to trust me. She knew I was her truest friend.”

  “What about Jay?”

  A flicker of anger, that swiftly passed and left Owen’s face as ravaged as before. “Jay was good at saving things. Or at wanting to save them. He wanted to save the harbor, and the scallop population; he wanted to save Margot; he may even have wanted to save me.” Owen paused for consideration. “All because of his failure to save the one person who really mattered.”