Nantucket Counterfeit

by Steven Axelrod

  Tim and I had run into Becky at the Stop & Shop one afternoon. I stood chatting with her in the dairy aisle while Tim investigated the gaudy packages of kids’ yogurt. I mentioned the ring of pale flesh on my ring finger and the conversation went on from there. Becky offered to buy the wedding band back. I had no idea that Tim was even listening.

  But he was. He had taken the divorce much harder than his sister, who seemed to cruise through life’s entanglements like a yacht through kelp. Timmy was the opposite: he got caught in the seaweed. It wrapped around him and immobilized him, and even if he made it out of the water, he was picking the stuff out of his hair for days afterward. The thought that his father might sell the sacred symbol of his parents’ marriage, of their family, of his home, just for money, for forty pieces of silver, horrified him. The things that mattered most to him meant nothing to his father, that was the worst part. He was alone. He felt like an orphan. He couldn’t say all this, of course. He was seven years old. Instead, he stood in front of the Sponge Bob yogurt boxes and started sobbing.

  I got the message.

  I apologized to Becky Harper, and hustled Tim out of the store as fast as I could. We spent the better part of two hours, first in the car driving around the island and then at home, talking about it. I apologized a couple of dozen times. The crying chugged to a halt. Finally, we compromised. I didn’t want the ring and Timmy did, so I’d just give it to him. Timmy liked that idea, but when I described the incident to Miranda a few days later, she said Timmy might lose it, as he lost everything else from his band trumpet to his math homework to his left sneaker.

  “I’ll hold it for him,” she said. “Until he’s old enough to take care of it himself.”

  That had seemed like a reasonable solution.

  Everything had seemed startlingly reasonable, in fact—until the evening when the actual hand-off occurred. It was after the Christmas band-chorus concert. Carrie was in the chorus and Timmy was in the band, so I had to be there for the duration.

  I found Miranda in the lobby outside, afterward. She was chatting with her yoga teacher and some dowdy woman from the Land Bank. Joe Arbogast was hovering nearby. There was a break in the conversation and it seemed like a perfect opportunity. I dug into my pocket as I approached.

  “Hey, Miranda—before I forget.” I handed her the ring. “I figure you could put it on the mantel or something, where he could see it but not actually put his hands on it. Or whatever. It’s up to you.”

  “Okay,” she said. She seemed off-balance, tricked into silence.

  I dove through the gap. “Well, okay then…see you around. Ladies,” I nodded to the two women. I ignored Joe. Twenty seconds later I was outside in the clean, biting cold of the December night, congratulating myself on handling a potentially awkward situation with skill and grace.

  I should have known better.

  The phone was ringing when I got home. I picked it up and Miranda started in before I could say a word. “I can’t believe you did that.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “How could you?”

  “I’m not sure what—”

  “In public that way? In front of my friends? That is so sick.”

  “Miranda—”

  “Was it just to humiliate me? Well, it worked. Congratulations. Throwing your wedding ring at me as if it was a piece of trash, as if our whole marriage was nothing but some—”

  “Wait a second. I didn’t throw it at you. I just—”

  “Joe thought it was childish. That’s what he said. Pathetic and childish.”

  “Joe?”

  “He saw the whole thing.”

  “What the hell does he have to do with—?”

  “He happens to be a very shrewd judge of character.”

  I took a breath. “Look, that ring means nothing to me. I didn’t want to do the whole ring thing in the first place. That was your idea, remember? I’ve been meaning to give the ring to you and this was the first chance I got. Period.”

  “Fine. Whatever. I have to go.”

  She hung up.

  Thinking about it later, the thing that struck me most about the conversation was Joe Arbogast’s comment. It was overly emphatic, bizarrely partisan. In my experience there was only one reason why a man would adopt a woman’s point of view with such strident zeal. It wasn’t because he had suddenly discovered a mutual interest in the arcane protocols of divorce. It wasn’t because he was a chivalrous debater who liked standing up for over-matched losers, or because he believed what she was saying and felt a moral obligation to fight for the truth.

  No, it was because he was fucking her. It was the only sensible explanation.

  Joe Arbogast was fucking my ex-wife.

  And Judith Barsch had big plans for Blair Hollister. Human nature carves these channels through the rock of observed behavior, like a million years of stream water, following gravity, twisting downhill. The motives were always the same, the opportunities found or self-created. Sex and death, passion and revenge, malice and forethought. Barsch needed Hollister on the loose because she was going to frame him for another murder. As soon as I knew why, I knew who.

  And as soon as I knew who, I knew how.

  I tumbled into my cruiser, burned rubber squealing out of the lot, hit the flashers, and stamped on the gas. The clock on the dash read 8:51. How long was the first act of Hollister’s play? I had no idea. All I knew for sure was I had to get to the theater, and I might already be too late.

  Chapter Twenty

  Stagecraft

  Kelly Ramos was clearing away the intermission drinks table when I burst through the front door of Bennett Hall.

  The bang of the door struck her like a gunshot. “Jesus, Chief—you scared the crap out of me.”

  “Can you get me backstage?”

  “Did you get my message?”

  “I need to—what?”

  “I called you.”

  I picked a great day to turn my phone off. “No, sorry. What’s going on?”

  “I smelled it again—that marshmallow smell. In the prop room, just before curtain. You said to tell you if—”

  That was all the confirmation I needed. “When does he drink the poison?”

  “He? Who—? Oh, in the play…Oh, my God. How can—?”

  “When does that scene happen?”

  “It…I don’t know. Right now, basically.”

  “Shit!”

  I didn’t organize a plan, I didn’t call for backup, I just ran. Back out the door, around the church, along the narrow alley beside it into the wide-sloped parking lot at the back, and down through the double doors that led to the backstage area—the dressing rooms, prop and costume storage, and the wings.

  I paused for a second trying to get control of my breath. I could hear the actors talking from the stage beyond the blackout curtain. I skirted a table of first act props, picked my way past some pieces of broken furniture, and slipped through the heavy drapes. I stood still listening.

  “Is that a threat?”

  “People only ask that question when they already know the answer.”

  I remembered the scene. Galassi was seconds away from pouring his drink and making his toast. When he fell convulsing to the boards it wouldn’t be an act.

  My time was up. I charged the stage.

  The judge had the wine in his hand. “Here’s to weakness,” he said, lifting his glass.

  The stage lights blinded me for a second. “Stop! Don’t drink that!”

  The younger actor, Jon, was frozen for a second, then he blurted, “You’re too late, McPherson!” and rushed me. His shoulder struck my chest and we both staggered into Galassi.

  McPherson?

  Jon rasped at the judge, “Fucking Toland! Improv on opening night? Really?”

  Galassi grinned and mouthed the words, “Let
’s do it.”

  Jon kicked my heel backward and slammed me to the stage on my back.

  “Is this your new idea, McPherson? That young Fenwick plans to murder me? Don’t concern yourself. It’s all bluster. He’s not capable of it, and in any case, killing me just digs his hole deeper. In fact, that hole is starting to look like…my grave!”

  Jon and I thrashed on the stage. He had twenty pounds on me, all of it muscle and he was at least fifteen years younger.

  Galassi poured more wine. “To deep holes and graves!”

  He was flushed, riding a giant black wave of adrenaline, making it up as he went along, hearing the tumbling thunder as the wall of water crashed behind him and the smooth face firmed and steepened in front of him. He was flying. This might be the finest moment of his acting career.

  And the last.

  He lifted the glass.

  I thrashed an arm free, and twisted Jon’s ear. He shrieked in pain and I lunged past him, Galassi’s ankle filling my field of vision. I reached out and yanked it as hard as I could. He staggered back and the glass went flying. He hit the drinks table and slid to the floor.

  I scrambled over to him, rasping in his ear. “That. Wine. Is. Poison. This is real.”

  His face went as white as the skin under your wristwatch. “Barsch.”

  I nodded. “Barsch.”

  “Oh, my God.” His eyes went wide, the name was a truck bearing down on him, headlights filling his world. Then it hit him and he passed out.

  The audience was applauding wildly. Most them were on their feet, cutting loose with a standing ovation. They knew something extraordinary had happened, they just didn’t know what. Which was just what I wanted. I helped Jon up. The noise covered my words. “Don’t touch that wine. The poison is real. This stage is a crime scene now. Do not taint it.”

  “But it—I—”

  “Get back on track. Wake up the judge and finish. Take your curtain call. Fit the action to the word. Make it work. The play must go on. Right? Right?”

  “Right.”

  “This is your big moment, Jon. Don’t blow it. You could wind up on Broadway after all.”

  I took a quick bow and dashed off the stage. As I scanned the audience in that moment, I saw Karen Gifford in the front row and it struck me that she might very possibly be the only person in the theater who understood what had just happened. Or perhaps not. It would all depend on how far she had travelled down the twisted path of misinformation and deception I had followed myself. It didn’t matter anyway. The important thing was that I had a trusted officer at the scene.

  As I wound my way down the twisted cobblestone lane, from the church to Centre Street, I phoned Haden Krakauer. I wanted the theater sealed and the stage and prop room taped off as soon as the audience had left the theater. There had to be other board members in attendance and one stray tweet, Facebook post, text, or even (most of them were quite elderly, after all) phone call could set my quarry on the run. I remembered years before, when I had startled a stately deer in the Polpis woods with the sound of unwrapping a cookie from my pocket. All it took was the faint crackle of plastic in that huge stillness to snap the fight-or-flight alarm in the deer’s central nervous system.

  I had no doubt that Barsch’s reflexes were just as sensitive.

  I ran down her options as I hurtled south on Hummock Pond Road. No boats until the morning and she had already missed the last commercial flight. That would trap most people on the island until morning, but the wealthy always had other options. I called Sean Pollack at the Fixed Base Operator general aviation terminal and told him to ground all flights. That was Barsch’s most likely escape route from the island and the fleets of private jets coming in out of Nantucket Memorial Airport in the summer made it the busiest airfield in New England, and that included Logan. If Barsch didn’t have her own plane she surely had half a dozen friends who did. Most of their mansions had a suite of rooms for their pilots. It was a good life. It certainly beat puddle-jumping for Cape Air.

  Pollack was upset at the request.

  “It’s not a request, Sean.”

  The silence on the line was more dramatic than an argument. He was having the argument all by himself in his head. I didn’t have to say a word.

  “How long are we talking about?” he asked finally.

  “Two or three hours, tops. Just until midnight, at the latest.”

  “Okay. But you owe me one.” I said nothing, as I swerved around a slow-moving minivan. “Fine. You don’t owe me one.” I slowed for the turn into the Nanahumacke Preserve. “Shit! I still owe you one, all right?” Never underestimate the power of silence. I was pulling into Barsch’s driveway when Pollack gave up and said. “Okay, ten. I owe you ten. Now let me get to work over here.”

  “Thanks, Sean.”

  Barsch’s Audi SUV was parked in the driveway with the hatch-back up, and a couple of suitcases already stacked. The door was open, she was obviously moving back and forth, loading up for the trip. She was taking a trip, all right. But not the one she was planning on.

  I stepped inside. It was quiet, but I heard movement from above. I took the stairs two at a time and followed the second-floor passageway to the master bedroom. Barsch was inside, laying an armful of dresses, still on their wooden hangers, across the bed, next to an open Louis Vuitton suitcase. The wheels and retractable handle—with its attendant image of Barsch trundling through an endless airport concourse, pulling the bag behind her—struck an oddly jarring note. Didn’t people like her have minions to lug their luggage for them? Maybe not.

  I stood in the door, watching her for a moment or two, choosing my opening gambit.

  “Going somewhere?”

  She looked up, startled for a second but back in control instantly, as if she’d just met an acquaintance and blanked on their name. But she would never forget for long. A quick scan of her interior files and archives and she’d be introducing everyone with a cordial smile, kind of like the one she was giving me right now.

  “Hello, Chief Kennis. It’s customary to knock.”

  “The door was open.”

  “I’m loading the car, so…I have a house on Mount Desert Island.”

  “But you’re missing the end of the play.”

  Another chilly little smile. “I know how it comes out.”

  “Yeah…fans like to leave early when the game’s in the bag. They beat the traffic that way. But sometimes you wind up with a Heidi Bowl situation. Do you remember the Heidi Bowl?”

  “No.”

  “Neither do I. But my dad always talked about it. Late November, 1968—Jets, Raiders. The game ran long and the network cut to the regularly scheduled program for the next time slot—the movie Heidi. Ooops. Kind of a bad call, because the Raiders went on to score two touchdowns in the final minute, and no one on the East Coast got to watch.”

  “And the point is?”

  “You never know.”

  “I play the odds. And I usually win.”

  “Fair enough. So tell me—why leave the island at the height of the season? I wouldn’t have bet on anyone doing that.”

  She turned back to the closet for a folded pile of shirts. “You know what the old ’Sconset biddies used to say—“No one goes to Nantucket anymore. It’s too crowded.”

  I watched her load the shirts into the suitcase and zip it up. “Looks like you’re going to be gone for a while.”

  “I like having my options open, and I’m an expert packer. My husband could never get all his clothes back in the suitcase when he came home from business trips. We used to joke about it.”

  “That’s your mutant power. Packing?”

  “No, puzzles. Fitting things together perfectly in unique ways that cannot be reproduced. That’s my real talent.”

  “I’ll give you that. You’re the best.”

  “In
deed, I am. And you are remarkably observant.”

  “It’s my job.”

  “I suppose.”

  She pulled another suitcase from the closet. The matching set must have cost close to ten thousand dollars. I pushed on. “So your husband traveled a lot? On business?”

  “Yes, he did.”

  “Was he planning to travel a lot for Beckham Studios?” She looked up—a first flicker of alarm, as if shuffling across the carpet she had touched something and gotten a static electricity sting. Once again, her face cleared into a calm but combative neutrality. “Trips to L.A. and New York?” I continued. “Sundance and Cannes? All the glamour locations. I can just see him, walking the red carpet a few steps behind the stars, but expecting to notch some thank you’s in the Oscar speeches.”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  “Most of all I want to thank Greg Fillion and his team at Beckwith for their unfailing support. You’re my heroes!”

  “I think you should leave.”

  “I can understand he was tempted. All that glamour. But glamour is a function of distance. As Greg found out.”

  She stood in front of the unzipped empty suitcase with her fists on her hips. “All right, very well. Congratulations. You did your research. Or some unheralded worker bee you employ did your research. That was a terrible time in our lives and I prefer not to think about it.”

  “Nope. My bet is, you haven’t thought about anything else since your husband’s death. Or suicide, to be more accurate.”

  “Yes, Gregory did indeed commit suicide. Not that it’s any business of yours.”

  “They swindled your husband. They left him broke and disgraced. They ruined both your lives and made you a widow. Anyone would want revenge. I don’t blame you for that.”

  “I appreciate your sympathy, Chief Kennis. If that was the purpose of your visit, consider it... mission accomplished. Now, if you’ll excuse me—”

  “Your plan failed.”