by David Daniel
“Do you know when that was?”
“Sixteen, eighteen years ago? I’m guessing. For trespassing.”
“We have paper files. But it might take a while.”
“How long?”
He glanced at the wall clock. “I could get to it later today? Say, by three?”
“That’d be great. I’ll pay for your time.”
“No, sir. If this is a legitimate request, it’s part of my job.”
I assured him it was legit all right and thanked him again.
The tide was low in Harwell’s Cove, the river reduced to a green channel that snaked between grassy banks. As I went down the slanting gangway to the Goofy Foot, Red Dog was standing by the outer rail with his back to me, working a lazy stream of water across the deck with a hose. “Ahoy,” I called. “Permission to board?”
When he turned, I had the momentary impression that I’d made a mistake. But it was Van Owen, all right. The Hawaiian shirt and paint-speckled chinos confirmed it, but beneath the visor of a long-billed fisherman’s hat he was wearing, his face looked like undercooked hamburger. One cheek was eggplant-purple, the eye swollen to a slit. I winced in sympathetic pain. “What happened?”
He grinned with puffy lips, and I saw a gap at the side where a tooth had been. He choked off the hose, which gasped and went dry. “Want to swap war stories?” he mumbled and motioned me aboard.
“You know mine.”
He coiled the hose and set it aside. “After I dropped you off last night, I went out to the Beachcomber to see if the Nickerson girl might be there. She wasn’t. I came back here and was sitting on deck smoking a blunt, thinking, when Shanley came by.”
“Mirror Shades?”
“He must’ve spotted me cruising the club and trailed me back. He had me for violating drug laws.”
“For puffing a weed on your own boat?”
“Well … I might’ve lit up before I got here.” He shrugged. “Then there was air pollution, and corrupting youth—smoke could’ve wafted clean back to the kids and they might’ve forgotten acid and Ecstasy long enough to get a contact high. Oh, yeah,” he added, “there was a little matter of resisting arrest. I guess what went down at the VA hospital had me feeling a little feisty. I landed a few before the nightstick tipped the balance.”
“Assaulting an officer? Smart.”
“Yeah, well … they call it dope for a reason. I was looking for a tooth around here someplace, but I guess it’s gone. I’m released on personal recognizance.”
“How do you feel?”
“Very funny.”
“I didn’t intend for the trouble to spill all over you.”
“Ahh, it was time. That’s what I was sitting here thinking about last night. If I’d squared with you sooner, we might’ve both been better off. I should’ve told you to stay away from TJ. Kid turn up yet?”
“No. And your telling me about TJ probably wouldn’t have mattered. I get in my own way a lot. I came out to say thanks. Sorry, too. You find that tooth, don’t forget to put it under your pillow—get something out of this.” I turned to go.
“Rasmussen,” he called after me, “you bound anyplace special?”
By rights I should have let him be, and he the same. He had chores to do and so did I. Beyond a pleasant dinner, little good had come of our getting together. But in an odd way I had the idea that we were each trying to make something right. “What’s on your mind?”
We took the Blazer; he said the four-wheel was better suited for our ride. We drove back roads out to the site where construction for Point Pines was going on. Several large estate homes were completed, with the shells of several more in progress, sited at discreet distances from one another on the rolling land. They made the houses in Ross and Paula Jensen’s neighborhood seem cheesy and small.
“This used to be woodland, with some old homes before Ted Rand got it.”
I nodded. “I spoke with Mrs. Rand.”
“Iva?” It got a prolonged glance. “You get around. How is she?”
“On the half-sober, half-looped scale? Half, I’d say.”
He nodded. “It’s too bad. She was a nice woman when I was growing up. She made the best Toll House cookies. I felt more at home there than at my own house—never mind that I had the teenage hots for her.”
I didn’t reveal her current opinion of him. “She said that Rand owns the town. I gather this is what she meant?”
“Wait, it gets better.”
We drove farther east, the land leveling into the coastal plain, and soon we came to the sand road that John Carvalho and I had been on, or one like it. A cable ran across the entrance, and beyond it was a sign that said FUTURE HOME OF POINT PINES GOLF COURSE. And now I understood why Red Dog had wanted to take the Blazer. At his direction, I switched to four-wheel drive, and we went around the gate. “In another year or so,” he said, “the only way I’ll get out here is carrying somebody’s golf bag.”
We rode over gently rolling land, beyond which were dunes and beyond that, though I couldn’t see it yet, the Atlantic. I shook my head. “How did Rand come to sit so high on the gravy train?”
“Luck, partly, I guess. He’s smart, and he works hard.”
“A lot of people living in three-room apartments do, too.”
Van Owen pointed. “Across the way is the nuke plant. Word got around that in twenty years, folks living out here would be glowing in the dark. A total crock, of course, but you get enough people thinking something and it might as well be true. Most sold and are living in Florida now, soaking up solar radiation. A few petitioned the government to close the plant, which wasn’t going to happen. The trust I mentioned grabbed the lots as they came up for sale.”
“How far under the document pile would I have to dig to find Rand’s name?”
“Deep. Pull over behind that cluster of scrub pine.”
We got out. I could hear the sound of heavy equipment in the distance, moving earth around. We climbed a low sandy berm to where we could see workers using the diesel equipment. As we watched, an open Jeep drove up to the workers, and a man got out and started talking to them, pointing, as if he was giving instructions. We walked along a rough trail behind the thicket of pines, slow going in the deep sand.
“Any idea what all this is worth?” Van Owen asked rhetorically. “There was talk at one point about it being protected as a wildlife preserve. It got to a committee on Beacon Hill.”
Where good ideas vanish like planes over the Bermuda Triangle, usually after they’ve dropped their payload. “No one complains anymore?”
His swollen lips shaped a sour grin. “It’s a done deal. There’ve been a few beefs. One of the workers questioned some of the quality controls on the job and prompted an OSHA audit. Inspectors found fault, but it got cleaned up, or someone got paid off. The poor bastard who’d come forward—I’ve heard that someone put a cinder block on his chest and wanted him to take back his complaint. He wouldn’t, and each time he exhaled, another block was added. He’s lucky he can still draw breath. He ended up with brain damage.”
“Was it investigated?”
“Industrial accident.”
“Is Rand involved in this stuff?”
“Personally? I doubt it. He may not even know. Like I said, he doesn’t have to be involved, really. And I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if the jokers you danced with last night are out there.”
“Working?”
He nodded.
We got past the cluster of pines. Suddenly, I realized that the group of workers was gone, and then I saw they’d piled into the Jeep and were coming our way. Evidently they’d seen us.
“Uh-oh,” Van Owens said “Busted!”
There were five of them. My memory was fresh with the beating I’d already taken. I thought about the Smith & Wesson on my belt, but this wasn’t the time for it. “When all else fails,” I said, “run!”
We galumphed back down the trail—which is the only thing you can do in soft sand—and ran for the Blazer.
“I’ll drive!” Red Dog yelled.
“Keys are in it.”
We piled in, and he got the truck going so quickly my door banged shut before I was seated. I fumbled for the seat belt and got it on, though it wasn’t going to be much protection if they caught us. Van Owen kept the pedal down as he zoomed over the hilly ground. He knew the terrain. At several points I thought we would roll, but we didn’t. He didn’t slow for the gate. He spun up into the sand, nearly capsizing us, but we tipped back to all four wheels, which caught traction, and we gunned through. When I looked back, I saw that we were alone.
31
The door to unit 3-B at the Sea Chimes was closed this time, so I knocked. I heard the padded approach of footsteps and saw the peephole darken. The door opened. Iva Rand’s eyes did, too. “What happened to you? You look awful.”
“May I come in?”
She gave me a skeptical look that said no-yes, eyed the paper bag in my hand and then stepped back passively. She had on another sweat suit, a shiny lavender nylon this time. The nail polish on her bare toes matched.
“Did you bring highballs?” she asked. “That’s how it goes, doesn’t it? Get the lady drunk, maybe make a pass, and she spills the dark secrets?”
“In bad novels,” I said. “Anyway, it’s a bit early.”
“Or late.”
I opened the paper bag and took out two coffees in Styrofoam and set them on the coffee table, along with packets of sugar and plastic thimbles of half-and-half. She looked disappointed. “You should’ve stuck with the cheap novel.” But she took a cup anyway and pried off the lid. We sat on the antique love seats. On the table I saw several old issues of Silver Screen and Photoplay, one of them open, where she’d apparently been reading it.
“I thought those passed on with William Holden,” I said.
“I found them at a yard sale. I confess a longing for the glamour of yesteryear—and all those corny ads for bust-enlarging crème. I was always tempted to try some, but then I worried that rubbing it on I’d end up with hands the size of fielders’ mitts.”
“Use Latex gloves.”
“Thanks, I’ll send for the crème today.” We both grinned, and I saw again the pretty woman she’d been.
Hoping the convivial mood would last, I said, “Mrs. Rand, Ben Nickerson and his daughter are still missing, but the girl made a call from down this way last night.”
She shrugged. “I don’t know why you came here. You think I have answers.”
“Do you?”
“What is this—a game? You tell me your secrets, I’ll tell you mine?”
“I’m just trying to put something together,” I said.
“Well, lots of luck. I’ve got enough troubles of my own, and you appear to have yours.”
“Ben Nickerson’s trouble may be a lot more serious.”
“I want to be left the hell alone, goddammit.”
“Garbo did that first,” I said, “and better.”
Her face tightened. “All right, mister, that does it! You turn around and march yourself right out of here!”
I felt a flare of anger. It was impossible to communicate with this abrasive, self-pitying woman. I drew a breath. “Look, if there’s been a crime committed, or the suggestion of one, you can be questioned as a material witness. That’ll mean a trip over to Plymouth Superior Court. I don’t know how that’ll play with your lost-lady routine, but I’d think it’d be easier to talk to me here.”
“Why should I? You’re no cop.”
I sighed. “No, and I’m not your enemy, Mrs. Rand.”
She didn’t appear convinced, but she refrained from comment. She went over to the sideboard and picked up a decanter and poured herself a knock. Wanting to access her before she hit overload, I said, “Did your husband mention running into Ben Nickerson a few days ago?”
A dark look flitted across her face. “No, I don’t think so.”
“Did he say he had a business appointment with anyone? Perhaps to meet at the beach?”
“He doesn’t make me party to his work. Never has.”
“You told me he was talking to someone about the old Surf ballroom.”
“To a broker, certainly not to Ben Nickerson. Nickerson doesn’t own anything around here.”
“You said your husband owns Standish. That’s quite a project he’s got going out there on Shawmut Point.”
“Is it?”
“I’m impressed that he’s been able to pull it off.”
“Then be impressed. I never said he wasn’t smart.”
“I mean, with environmental restrictions, and the sheer cost of coastal land …”
“Point Pines is his brainchild; he’s never really shared it with me. I don’t know much about it—or especially care, for that matter. I once cared about everything he did. His dreams were my dreams, but that hasn’t been true for many years. Now, if there’s nothing more …”
I was drilling but wasn’t having any luck. “What changed that?” I asked. “Your son’s accident?”
Her eyes snapped wide, then almost immediately narrowed. “You shut up!”
I’d struck a nerve. I backed off. “How about a woman named Jillian Kearns? Has your husband ever brought her up?”
“What is this with asking me questions about him and young women?”
“How do you know she’s young?”
She sneered. “That’s the only kind Randy is interested in. Have you met his charming miss from Takes-ass?”
Her anger was rising again. To stave it off, I said, “A doughnut would go good with this coffee right now, but I’ll settle for something sneaky in it.”
It was a language she understood. She brought over the dwindling decanter. I held up my cup, and she poured and set the decanter down on one of her movie magazines. We fell back on ritual and touched the drinks, my paper cup to her glass. “To the stars of yesteryear,” I said.
“The past—which can stay right the hell where it is.”
But I wasn’t sure it could. Maybe alcohol and caffeine would help my head, though I honestly couldn’t see how. Mainly, I needed a reason to stay a little longer, to try to draw the hermit crab from its shell. I moved over to the large picture window. Beyond, far out at sea, sunlight and clouds moved restlessly on the surface of the water. Closer to shore, the wind was blowing spume off the waves like pale sparks. I turned. “I visited your son.”
I braced for reaction—perhaps even attack—but it didn’t come. She sat unmoving, staring at nothing. In the stillness, I could hear the growl of a motorcycle along the beach strip.
“He’s an impressive young man,” I said, “even lying in the VA hospital bed.”
She gauged me a moment with questing eyes. Her surprise earlier at my battle scars said she probably hadn’t known of my visit, and now I was sure. It was one more secret Rand had chosen not to share with her. “Why is TJ there?” I asked.
She moved a shoulder. “Where else? He needs constant care.”
“Your husband could afford private nurses at home. The surroundings would be more cheerful.”
She went on looking at me, saying nothing. It was similar to the reaction Van Owen had had. And now I had to wonder: Was it possible that in everyone’s mind, because Rand had willed it so, TJ was dead? She took a cigarette from a cloisonné box on the table, and I used the table lighter and applied flame to the tip. She drew in smoke and then sat back, her legs curled beneath her, her cigarette pointed at the ceiling.
“He was the most beautiful little boy. And he stayed that way, year after year—not little, he grew; he was a wonderful athlete—but happy, well-adjusted, good at school.” Her voice had lost some of its raspy edge. “I’d wanted to have more children, but it … didn’t work out. Do you have children?”
“No.”
She nodded. “If I was destined only to have the one, I couldn’t have had a better child. And then …” She fell silent.
I thought about the photograph I’d looked at in Rand’s den,
of Iva clutching her infant son. “Chet Van Owen told me he was different after he got home from the service.”
She frowned, but she began to talk again. “I used to think that Teddy came back from the service with that post-traumatic thing. But I realize it was probably something he’d been feeling before, which is why he chose the military in the first place, instead of college, as his father and I had wanted. I think that his … achievements, the kudos, weren’t all that satisfying to him. He used to say he wanted to make connection with people, and I wonder now if somehow those things got in the way. But it’s true, when he came home from the Marines he … was depressed.” As she talked, she’d absently begun to round ashes off her cigarette, giving it a point.
“Had he found out about Ginny Carvalho?”
Her gaze came up quickly: dark and sharp. “What do you know about her?”
“She was your son’s girlfriend. She drowned while he was away.”
“You seem to be quite a student of Standish’s history.”
“People seem to want to share it. Bits and pieces. I’m lost. I need help.”
“From me?”
“If possible.”
“Well, that’s got nothing to do with anything. Nothing. And I’m dropping it.”
She squashed out her cigarette and picked up her drink. I said, “One story I heard was that the Carvalho girl was promiscuous.” There was no finesse to my fishing; I was chumming now, casting bait wherever I could. “That she was with some high school guys the night she died.”
She waved a hand in sharp dismissal. “That never panned out. It was a drowning, plain and simple.”
“Was there an investigation?”
“I don’t know.”
“How about an autopsy?”
“How would I know that?” She hesitated. “I only know Vin never found evidence of any foul play.”
I blinked. “Vin Delcastro?”
“Who do you think I mean?”
Under the bandage, my head throbbed. “He was police chief back then?”
She looked at me, as if astonished by my density. “He was twenty-some years old. How could he be chief? He was a rookie patrolman. He’s the one who found the body.”