Orient

by Christopher Bollen

  “Things have changed out here,” Beth replied.

  “Well, I just drove by it and it’s still sitting vacant. Maybe those sky-highers had second thoughts. Maybe now she’d accept money from a guy like me.”

  Beth smiled impatiently. She was still bruised by the fact that he hadn’t listened to her. “What can I do for you, Mike?”

  “I’m sorry I didn’t take your call as seriously as I should have.” His voice was the Long Island-ese of her childhood, clipped consonants, a saxophone of vowels. Bad for apologies. “You can’t blame me. The deceased you were worried about was very old, and we still have no reason to assume her death was suspicious.”

  “I don’t blame you,” she said slowly, intentionally unhysterical. “I just wish you had listened. I think of you as a friend.”

  “Of course,” Mike said in relief. He scratched his beard again. His white shirt was stained yellow under the armpits, hardened by washing and dark with fresh sweat. She wondered if he’d decided not to wear a coat so she’d be more likely to invite him in. Or maybe he simply wanted to appear less official, an acquaintance instead of a police detective. He kept looking over her shoulder, as if to catch sight of her phantom husband in the hallway. His left hand gripped a notebook ceremonially. He had no pen. “I’m glad you think of me as a friend. I was hoping you would.” He paused. “You heard about the fire.” He cast his eyes past Magdalena’s lawn, toward the Muldoons’ home farther west along the Sound.

  “It was arson, wasn’t it?”

  He nodded. “We detected an accelerant poured through the ground floor.”

  “Who would do that?”

  Mike scratched his beard again, a tic so persistent she wanted to suggest he shave it off. “That’s what we’re trying to determine. We don’t have any strong leads yet. It’s a fresh case. Seems everyone in Orient has their own opinions about who could have been responsible. And then there’s the insurance company’s opinion. They’d like to pin it on the eldest son. He seemed to have some problems with his family—normal teenage stuff, but he wasn’t found in his room like the rest of them. If a family member started the fire, the insurance company could fight the claim.”

  Beth didn’t know much about Tommy Muldoon other than what she’d gleaned seeing him walking down Main Road after school. He was the sort of remote, maladjusted kid who would have attracted her in high school. She didn’t know much about his personality other than the fact that he and Mills had been friends, or more than friends—a more-ness that had sent Pam out on her motherly warpath the last time Beth saw her alive.

  “I can’t believe a kid would turn on his family like that,” she said. Mike nodded, scratched.

  “Yeah, have you been watching the local news? All those pictures of the Muldoons they keep showing, like the perfect family, arms around each other, so many picnics. I didn’t know a family could throw so many picnics. It would be hard, in that light, to press a case for the fire being started by the son. These cases get played out in the court of public opinion too. Of course, we want to solve the case whether the community’s bringing any pressure or not.”

  “I haven’t been watching the news,” she told him as she leaned against the doorframe. “And, to be honest, I haven’t left my house in days, so I don’t know what’s going on.”

  “I’m not solving this alone,” Mike said, jerking the conversation forward, impatiently guiding it toward his purpose. “The fire marshal’s involved too, and he’s threatening to bring in some bigwigs from the city to take over. I’ve only had this position for a year, and they keep trying to back burner me. They don’t think a Southold detective has the experience to investigate such a vicious case. I keep telling them that a local detective’s going to know the people who can help get to the bottom of it.” He tapped his notebook. “I came here because I remembered what you said about Magdalena. I know you’ve only been back for a few months, but I got the feeling you’ve been paying attention to things. So I just stopped by to ask you, as a friend, if you had any observations that might help me. Anything strange or connected.”

  “Connected?”

  “Just anything that could shed some light.” Mike Gilburn’s lips twitched. For Beth, it was a glimpse of how desperate he was. Mike was still trying to get a cat out of a tree, and there were four bodies in the Southold morgue that, for once, he couldn’t dismiss as natural deaths. “People out here are scared. And more than one of them has brought up your name, because they’ve heard you believe Magdalena Kiefer was murdered.”

  Beth closed her eyes. She had meant to come back to Orient to start a new life. Now death was greeting her on the front porch.

  “Tell me again why you thought your neighbor was killed.”

  “First of all, I’m not involved with any of this. I don’t really enjoy being thought of as the woman in Orient brewing crazy stories about murder. Six months ago, I was living in Manhattan.” She tossed her fingers, a cultivated gesture of urban anomie. “I pretty much keep to myself.”

  “I understand that.”

  “Just so you do,” she said. “As for Magdalena, it all goes back to Jeff Trader. Magdalena thought he knew something, something bad happening out here—and before you ask, I don’t know what it was. She told me that Jeff had changed in recent months, gotten nervous and fearful. Apparently he came to see her right before he died, drunk and rambling on about the historical board. Magdalena was convinced he was killed out in the harbor. Not suicide or an accident, but murdered over something he had found out. Maybe it involved the historical board, or maybe it was unrelated, a secret someone else didn’t want discovered. All I know is, a few days later, Magdalena was also dead. That’s what I was trying to tell you in her driveway.” Mike raised a defensive hand, but Beth kept talking. “Maybe Magdalena was killed because of what she suspected. Maybe someone silenced her before she could speak.”

  Mike looked down at his blank notebook in frustration. “You said on the phone that you might have evidence.”

  Beth didn’t know whether Mills had managed to retrieve Jeff’s journal before the fire. It might already be destroyed, lying amid the char of Tommy’s former bedroom. But a whimper escaped her throat as she realized that Tommy had been the last person to have the book. Now Tommy was dead, as if the book itself had brought on each crime.

  “Are you okay?” Mike asked, cocking his head.

  “I had a journal that belonged to Jeff Trader. Magdalena gave it to me to hold on to.” She wasn’t going to admit to trespassing.

  “Can I see it?”

  “I’m not sure where it is,” she stalled. “I’ll have to look for it.” Mike’s expression quickly changed, and he grunted almost skeptically. He didn’t believe her. But she refused to implicate Mills, not until she had spoken with him. “I’ve been having a hard time lately,” she improvised. “I’m sorry. My husband and I, we’ve been trying to have a baby, but it doesn’t look like that’s going to happen.”

  Mike nodded apologetically. She remembered his recent divorce and the loneliness in his voice when he talked about the children he and his wife didn’t get around to having. “When you find the book, can you please call me?” He slipped a business card from his shirt pocket.

  “I already have your number.”

  He gave it to her anyway. “Right now I’m not treating either of those deaths as related. But I’d like to see that book. I’d consider it a favor if you took the time to look for it. One last question, Beth, and then I promise I’ll let you get back to your day.” He touched his fingers to her arm. He had small, sensitive hands, un-cop-like hands, better for consoling victims than for cuffing perpetrators. “Do you know anyone who had a problem with the Muldoons? Anyone who was in a fight with them? Any reason at all that someone might wish them harm?”

  She was glad she hadn’t mentioned Mills. Even a small-time cop like Mike Gilburn was bound to learn of the argument between Mills and Pam before long. She wanted desperately to protect him, to fake an alibi if
he needed one, to cast suspicion anywhere but in the direction of Paul’s unknown foster kid. There was no stopping suspicion once it settled on a person. When one bird found a boulder rising from the water, other birds followed until they built a colony, squabbling over every inch.

  “No,” she said. “I mean, I know there was a lot of disagreement about Bryan’s plans for conservancy, but nothing that would lead to murder.”

  “I thought you said the historical board might have been the reason that Jeff Trader was killed.”

  “He warned Magdalena about the board. But she sat on that board too. She did change her will just before she died. She decided not to leave her house to OHB, so that could be important.”

  Mike smiled at his first moment of insight. “Then they wouldn’t have had much to gain by killing her, would they?”

  “God, I don’t know.” She groaned. “Are you sure the fire wasn’t accidental? How do you know that an accelerant was poured intentionally through the house? Couldn’t there be other explanations? Who knows what happens behind closed doors?”

  Mike scratched his beard. She noticed that he still wore his wedding ring. Why would a man keep wearing his wedding ring months after signing his divorce papers? It was like chastening the hand for what it could no longer reach for in support.

  “There’s a reason we can’t pin it on Tommy,” he said. “The front door of the Muldoons’ house had been opened. Not broken in by the firefighters, but opened. The alarm system had gone off. Why would a kid who meant to burn his house down allow the alarm system to go off before he lit the match? And where did he put the canister? Tommy died in the upstairs hallway. We didn’t find any sort of gas can at the scene. Whoever started the fire must have taken the canister with him. Out the front door, the same way he came in.”

  She closed her eyes and gripped the doorknob. Mike thanked her. “Call me when you find the book. Or if anything else occurs to you. Even if you just want to talk.”

  Beth stepped into the hall. “Mike,” she said as he proceeded down the walk. “How’s the daughter? Is Lisa Muldoon holding up okay?”

  Mike froze and turned his head.

  “She’s as bad as you could expect. Came down from college in Buffalo and arrived the next morning. We’ve got her staying at the Seaview. Someone should pray for that poor girl.”

  Beth closed the door and walked up the stairs. She took her clothes off, stepped into the shower, and leaned into the warm jet that rinsed her face. Her stomach was beginning to bowl out just below her navel, as firm as muscle. She hugged herself under the nozzle and thought of Mills and the argument with Pam in Paul’s front yard, right out in the open where anyone could see. She felt she had to do something to help him, and waiting around wasn’t it. Beth tied a towel around her waist and entered the bedroom. Pulling open the drawer of her end table, she took out Jeff Trader’s pen-ravaged photograph of Holly Drake. “What about you?” she said.

  CHAPTER 19

  In a matter of days, Pruitt Securities signs popped up on the front lawns of Orient like late-blooming flowers. Beth saw that the Drakes had one staked in their lawn. Through the wavy glass of the front windows, beyond the elaborate display of jacquard swatches and lotus motifs, she saw Holly sitting alone in a leather chair, bent forward like the arm of a desk lamp. Holly was sobbing, her shoulders and long red hair shaking, a tissue bunched in her fingers. Her silks were spread around her on the carpet, like sunning lizards in a terrarium. Beth stepped back and rang the bell. It took two minutes for Holly to compose herself.

  When the door opened, Holly stared out from the shadows. Her freckled skin was blotched red, and her nose was running.

  “Oh, I’m sorry,” Beth said, feigning surprise. “Is this a bad time? Of course it is. It’s a bad time in general out here. I can come back.”

  Holly shook her head and sniveled. “If you want to see Cole again, he’s at his office. You can try him there.”

  “No, I’m actually here for your fabrics,” she said, pointing to a gaudy turquoise batik through the window. “I wanted to buy one for a birthday present. But honestly if this isn’t—”

  “No, no, it’s fine. Please.” Holly swept her fingers through her hair and straightened herself into the role of saleswoman. Beth knew that Holly couldn’t afford, even in sorrow, to turn away a customer—especially a customer who had fashionable Manhattan friends with conspicuous bank accounts, not when her home textile emporium had languished so long out of sync with the regional tastes of Eastern Long Island. She ushered Beth into the showroom parlor, messier than it had been on her first visit, with fabrics and papers strewn across the desk and floor. A tuna sandwich lay abandoned on a plate after a single bite. Holly balanced herself on the edge of the desk, her black sweater brightening her long, red hair.

  A marbled cat wound between the desk legs and made a run for the hallway, but not fast enough for Holly, who scooped it up and brought its neck to her cheek. “Pearl, behave.”

  “I didn’t know you had a cat.” Beth reached out in its general direction but had no intention of petting it. Do not approach cats when trying to affect a general sense of harmony and compassion. Cats are mutinous betrayers; never count on them for cooperation.

  “She was a stray. Showed up a week ago and wouldn’t leave the back door. Her cries broke my heart. I have to keep her in the basement when Cole’s home—he doesn’t like them. He doesn’t realize they just need someone to give them a little affection.” Holly sneezed and the cat sprang from her chest, jumping across the Persian carpet and scampering up the steps. Beth wondered if it was one of the cats Mills had fed at Jeff Trader’s house. Holly dabbed at her nose with the tissue.

  “Maybe you’re allergic,” Beth said.

  Holly waved off the idea, gliding through her showroom. Her fair, freckled skin was rash red and blotchy, a barometer of her suffering. It was the kind of skin that made for a terrible liar.

  “What are you looking for exactly?” Holly asked, wearily. “I have some gorgeous pillowcases from Iran that have just arrived. Or some South Indian napkins, beaded by local women. Ten cents on every dollar fights sex slavery.”

  Beth walked to the window seat, her fingers flipping through swatches of soft embroidery, feigning admiration. They were beautiful, though overpriced for a market that had yet to settle on the North Fork. But Beth respected Holly’s commitment to the exotic wares, which seemed to contradict the plain suburban man she had married. Could anyone be less exotic than Cole Drake? She had always liked Holly, the way she liked any woman who used bumper stickers to declare her right to choose and the injustices of the death penalty—two very un–Cole Drake opinions. Perhaps if she hadn’t come here to interrogate Holly, they might have become friends, sharing lunches and books and protesting the protestors outside the Hauppauge Planned Parenthood clinic.

  Holly vanished down the sunken step to the den but soon rematerialized, wearing a pair of velvet house slippers. “I have some saris coming in a shipment this week. They’re over sixty years old, too delicate to wear, but they’re gold-threaded and make for wonderful wall décor. I don’t know who you’re shopping for. A loved one maybe? Or a friend?” Beth had presumed that getting Holly to talk in her grief would be easy, but Holly checked her tears, biting down on the pain. She was tougher than Beth had expected.

  “Holly, are you okay? Maybe we should sit down?” Beth asked, touching her shoulder, a surprise attack of compassion.

  “No,” Holly said coolly, stepping backward in alarm, as if Beth had asked if she needed to go to the hospital. “I mean, why?”

  Beth tried again. There seemed to be some specific implication in Holly’s grief, something about the death of the Muldoons that had struck her particularly hard.

  “I know what it’s like to be alone out here,” Beth said. “I don’t have many people to talk to either. The quiet can get to you.” Beth grabbed Holly’s wrist. When she didn’t withdraw it, she led her toward the couch. Beth sat first, leaving Holl
y no option but to do the same.

  “I’m sorry,” Holly managed. “I’m just so broken up about the fire, about Bryan and his family killed like that. How could that happen to such sweet people? Bryan was doing so much good in the village, or trying to. Why would anyone do that to him?”

  Beth was surprised by the way Holly spoke about the tragedy. She thought she’d been closer to Pam, but it was Bryan’s name that brought tears to her eyes.

  “How’s everything with Cole? Are you two doing okay?”

  Holly lifted her chin in a manner implying that the labor of chin-lifting was noble under the circumstances. “You’re right,” she said weakly. “It does get lonely out here, and friends haven’t come easily. Orient has always been Cole’s home, not mine. I’ve tried to make the most of it. I opened this shop. This useless, stupid shop where I make no money except for what I sell online. I don’t even need this showroom. I could sell my textiles from anywhere. You know, this wasn’t exactly my plan. I was in medical school at Syracuse when I met Cole. He was getting his law degree. One summer I went to Karachi as a volunteer nurse, and the women in those NGO camps were so impressive, so inspiring to me, that when I came back I started working in textiles made by the women there. I quit school and married Cole, and for a while I was happy. But now, I’d give anything to go back and finish my degree. I used to hate those cold dissections, but I’d love to do them now. Love to feel like I was getting my fingers under the skin, touching something real.”

  Holly examined the pink undersides of her hands, scalloped and cracked from the dry winter air.

  “It was my mistake,” she said somberly. “Quitting and moving out here, I mean. It wasn’t Cole’s fault. You asked how we’re doing. I don’t know. And now with the fire, and poor Bryan and his family dead, and this living room full of colors from a world away . . .”