“Raffle ticket?” she called down.
“Hi!” I called, shading my eyes. “We’re, um, visiting the Cape. Can we talk to you for a minute?”
She shrugged, turned, and went back inside. Darshi and I looked at each other, then mounted the wooden steps. On the second story we found a small office with low ceilings, exposed wooden beams, and walls of the same unpainted wood as the first-floor storage area. The air smelled like the inside of the cabins at the summer camp in Maine: must from the off-season, wet wood and mold, bug spray and sunscreen, sunshine and sweaty kids. The essence of summertime.
A large, fluffy white dog lay curled on an oval-shaped blue and green rug, eyes closed and pink tongue protruding. The gray-haired woman sat behind a metal desk that was cluttered with papers and folders and a small electrical fan that whirred as it turned. She was dressed in a loose green T-shirt that read PROVINCETOWN YACHT CLUB in black letters, and a pair of faded tan cotton clamdiggers, and orange Crocs on her big feet. The dog cracked an eye open when we entered, determined we did not constitute a threat, and promptly gave a loud sigh and went back to sleep.
“Oh, what a beautiful dog!” I said, hoping to appeal to her, dog-lover to dog-lover. “Who’s this good boy?”
“Lance,” she said, in the same sour, begrudging mutter.
“Hi, Lance!” I said to the dog. He didn’t open his eye again, but his tail thumped twice on the rug, raising dust. “Can I pet him?”
“I wouldn’t,” she said.
Darshi cleared her throat and drew herself up straight.
“Thank you for talking with us,” I began. “I’m Daphne Berg, and this is Darshi Shah. We’re visiting from New York City.”
“Dora Fitzsimmons,” said the woman, confirming that she was the one I’d spoken to earlier. She didn’t offer her hand, but she did nod at the chairs. “Have a seat.” Darshi and I settled ourselves. “You two got a kid?” Her down-east accent was so heavy it sounded like she was asking if Darshi and I had gutted a child. I bit my lip as a nervous giggle escaped.
“What? Oh, no! Just a few questions. I, um, called you earlier this morning…”
The woman’s eyes narrowed, and her lips thinned.
“I’m not a reporter! I promise,” I said, holding my hands in the air. “I just met a guy last night, and I need to find him, and he said he’d been a camper here…”
“Sailor,” she interrupted.
“Pardon me?”
“We call the kids sailors. Or skippers, once they’ve passed their test.”
“Oh. Sorry. Sailor. Anyhow, he’s about my age, twenty-five or -six, and he was here about sixteen years ago. His name—at least, the name he gave me—is Nick Andros.”
“Nup.” Dora picked up one of the folders on her desk, dismissing us without having to say we’d been dismissed.
“Can I describe him to you? He had curly brown hair and a scar on his ankle.”
“Nup,” she repeated.
“Did you know Drue Cavanaugh?” Darshi asked.
The woman leaned forward. Her chair creaked. The dog opened one eye again, keeping it trained on me and Darshi as his mistress stared at us.
Swallowing hard, I said, “I was at Drue’s house last night when I met the guy. He mentioned knowing her.”
“The Lathrop house,” the woman corrected. “The Cavanaughs sold their place here. Years ago.”
“Right,” I said. “Although, actually, I think I was at the Weinbergs’ house. That’s who Nick told me it belonged to. Drue’s family had rented it for the weekend. For Drue’s wedding.”
Some expression moved across the woman’s face, too fast for me to read it. Sorrow, I thought, and scorn, too.
“Drue was one of my sailors, ayuh.” I waited for more. More was not forthcoming.
“Was Drue a good sailor?” Darshi asked.
Dora gave a single slow blink. “Good enough.”
“Do you remember anything else about her?”
“I shan’t speak ill of the dead.” After a moment of silence, it was clear that she’d said all she meant to say about Drue.
I looked at Darshi, hoping she’d pick up the interrogation, but she was staring into the dim recesses of the building and appeared to be lost in thought.
I turned back to Dora. “Do you know a fishing boat called the Lady Lu?” I asked.
She shrugged. “I know most of the charters, sure.”
“This guy, Nick, he told me he worked on a boat called the Lady Lu. Do you know anyone connected to the boat? A captain or something?”
“Skipper,” Dora said. I heard, or imagined I could, amusement in her voice. Wonderful, I thought. It was nice that the two landlubbers were providing her with a laugh. “His name’s Dan Brannigan. But if he’s out t’sea, there’s no way to reach him.”
“No radio?” Darshi asked. Her voice was cool. “Aren’t ships required to have radios, so the Coast Guard can reach them?”
“For emergencies, sure.” She gave us a look just short of scornful. “You two don’t look like an emergency.”
“Ms. Fitzsimmons. Drue is dead,” I said. “Which you know already. And the police need to talk to this Nick, or whoever he was. He crashed the party, and he gave me a fake name, and the police are trying to find him.” I swallowed, telling myself to breathe, attempting to calm down. “We’re trying to do him a favor.”
She stared at us, her gaze direct. “Are you, now?”
“I am.” I put my hand against my heart. “I swear.” Another crumb of a memory had just surfaced. “He told me Drue used to lock him in the supply closet. And send him on snipe hunts. And make up marks of sail.”
“Points of sail,” said Dora. She stared at us for what felt like a long time. “Look. I’d help you if I could. But I can’t.”
In desperation, I said, “Is there anyone in town who might know this guy? Anyone who could help?”
She shrugged. “I s’pose you could go to the dock. Ask if anyone’s seen this fella around the Lady Lu. But all of the charters are going to be out t’sea on a day like today. Won’t be back ’til sundown.” She gave us a long, assessing look and finally said, “Fella at the intersection of Bradford and Commercial Street? Dressed up as a Pilgrim, ringin’ a bell? He might be particularly helpful.”
Fantastic, I thought. A traffic cop dressed as a Pilgrim. How lucky that we’d arrived on mess-with-the-out-of-towners day. “Thank you,” I said, getting to my feet. The dog opened its eye again and released a long and mournful fart before rolling onto its opposite side.
“Tell him Dora sent you,” she said.
* * *
I whispered to Darshi that we should walk slowly, taking our time making our way back to the car, hoping that Dora would reconsider, that she’d come running after us to tell us the guy’s name, along with his address and phone number, but all I heard as Darshi unlocked the doors was the sound of children’s voices, high and cheerful, carrying across the water.
“She knows him,” Darshi said as we climbed into that car.
“I also got that impression.”
“She knows him and she’s covering for him. But why?” She frowned, squinting in the sunshine. Darshi was a night owl, not a big swimmer or a fan of beaches. Between that and the overwhelming whiteness of the population, or at least the parts of it we’d seen, my roommate seemed immune to Cape Cod’s charms. “Look for a man directing traffic dressed up as a Pilgrim. Puh-leaze.”
“You don’t think we should check?” I asked.
Darshi pulled back onto Commercial Street, narrowly missing a collision with a man clad in a tiny silver Speedo and nothing else, pedaling an old-fashioned cruiser-style bike that was painted hot pink. “Something about this… about Nick, or whatever his name is.” She shook her head in frustration. “It’s like it’s on the tip of my tongue, but I can’t remember.”
“So you don’t think we should go look for a Pilgrim directing traffic?”
Darshi started to drive, then stomped the bra
kes again. This time, the hold-up was a drag queen in a neon-yellow minidress and towering pink wig who was riding an adult-size tricycle down the center of the street. Signs on both sides of the rear wheels advertised her show that night at a place called the Crown & Anchor. “I don’t know,” she said. “Maybe that isn’t any weirder than the rest of this.”
* * *
The Pilgrim-costumed traffic cop turned out to be real. In between dongs of the brass bell he held and almost balletic spins he performed in his buckled shoes, he said that he did know that Dan Brannigan had a new mate this summer—“Tim O’Reilly’s got the shingles, don’t you know,” but, alas, he didn’t know the name of “the young feller.” He estimated the boat would be back by five o’clock; five-thirty at the latest. It was barely noon, not even seven hours since I’d found Drue. It felt like a week had already elapsed, if not an entire month.
“We can come back,” said Darshi. The traffic Pilgrim had sent us to the Portuguese Bakery for a snack. “Get the malasadas, if they’re fresh,” he’d said. They were, and we had, and, in spite of everything, the deep-fried, sugar-coated pastries were delicious, the happy marriage of a fritter and a piece of fried dough. Unfortunately, the guys behind the counter hadn’t known the name of Dan Brannigan’s mate. Neither did the guys at the bicycle shop next door, although that visit jarred loose the memory of Nick telling me he’d worked at a bicycle shop somewhere else on the Cape, only I couldn’t remember the name of the town, if he’d told me. Darshi and I had spent the next twenty minutes sitting on a bench outside Town Hall, watching the drag queens hand out flyers for their shows and calling every nearby bike shop that had a listed phone number. No one remembered a Nick, or a guy who’d matched his description, from the previous summer.
“Maybe we could bring Dora some malasadas,” Darshi suggested. “We could try to bribe her. Loosen her up with carbs and fat.”
I shook my head. By then, I was getting antsy. When I closed my eyes, I could see Detective McMichaels knocking on my bedroom door, pushing it open, finding me gone, and deciding that I’d been responsible for Drue’s demise, because only a guilty person would have fled. I would have given anything to be back in New York, needle-felting the Nativity scene I’d promised a client. I’d already done the sheep, donkeys, and Wise Men, and I’d special-ordered blue wool roving for Mary’s gown. I’d make myself a cup of tea and have one of the crumbly sweet cornmeal cookies that I liked, and sit on the couch with Bingo curled up beside me, and know that I was as happy as anyone had a right to be.
“I think we should go,” I said.
Darshi and I got back into the car and began the slow and perilous trip back to Route 6. The streets were narrow, and there were pedestrians everywhere, guys in pairs or groups, exhausted-looking couples lugging armloads of towels or beach chairs, pushing strollers or carrying toddlers in slings or on their shoulders.
While Darshi paused to let another crew of barely clad men go by, muttering “Doesn’t anyone in this town wear shirts?,” I shut my eyes and pictured Nick: his tousled hair, his crooked smile. I remembered his smell, the smoothness of his skin, the way he’d looked in the hot tub when he’d pulled me into his lap. I shook my head, not wanting to play that tape forward, and rewound it instead. The way he’d looked at the party, his tanned, corded forearm on the table. The way he’d looked, sitting on the deck, tilting his head back to take in the big house.
And then I had it.
“What?” Darshi asked as I jolted forward. “What is it? Are you okay?”
“Holy shit,” I said. “Darshi, we have to go back.”
“Why?”
“I know where he is!”
“Where?” Darshi gaped at me. I leaned across the gearshift and pounded on the horn, earning a dirty look from the last two shirtless fellows carrying boogie boards across the street.
“Back at the house! Come on!”
“What? How do you know?”
“Just, can you please go any faster?”
“Um, not really,” Darshi said, gesturing at the red light we’d reached. “Calm down. Tell me what you remembered.”
I shook my head, worried that I’d jinx it or that it would sound silly once I’d said it out loud, so I sat in silence as Darshi drove, fingers crossed, praying I was right.
* * *
Back at the Weinbergs’ house, there weren’t any cops waiting for us in the driveway, and the first floor was empty. The salon bedroom was unoccupied, and the bedroom Minerva had been assigned was empty except for a pair of hard-sided silver suitcases.
I pointed at the door between the bedrooms and nodded. Darshi reached into her purse and pulled out a Swiss army knife. I put my finger to my lips and put my hand on the doorknob. Locked. No surprise. I beckoned Darshi forward… but before she could start to work on the lock, the door opened. A hand shot out of the darkness and gripped my wrist, hard, yanking me into the darkness.
“Hey!” I squealed as the door slammed shut behind me. I had the impression of a hard chest against my back, warm breath on my neck.
“Shh,” said the man who’d called himself Nick Andros, with his lips against my ear. “Shhh! Don’t scream. I’m not going to hurt you. I just want to explain.”
Darshi, meanwhile, had pulled the door open. “Let her go!” she said, brandishing her knife… which, I saw with a sinking feeling, she’d opened to the manicure scissors instead of the blade. Nick released me immediately. Darshi looked him over, still aiming her scissors in his direction. “Is that him?” she asked.
“That’s him.”
“Shh!” Nick said. “Please. Both of you. Close the door. I’ll explain everything.”
“You can explain out here,” said Darshi. She crossed her arms over her chest and smirked at him. “Luckily, one of us is immune to your hotness.”
“Please,” Nick repeated. His eyes were locked on my face. “I didn’t mean to run out on you. Just give me five minutes. I swear, I’ll explain everything.”
I looked past Nick, inspecting the small room. There was a refrigerator, piles of cardboard boxes, a pet carrier, a few suitcases, a lamp with no shade. The air was cool and smelled faintly of mildew and dust. A single lightbulb screwed into the ceiling cast a weak glow over the walls filled with tufted pink insulation and the concrete floor. A sleeping bag was spread out on an inflatable mattress; a reading lamp was plugged into an outlet near the baseboard. Nick’s phone was plugged in, too, and he’d provisioned himself with a bottle of seltzer. He also had a book, an old paperback of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, which made me feel a little more relaxed. Probably there were some crazed killers who enjoyed spending time in Narnia, but I doubted there were many.
“You made yourself right at home, I see,” I said.
His face seemed to contort. With an effort, he smoothed it out. “I used to live in this house,” he said. “When I was little.”
I felt my eyebrows ascend. “What?”
“When I was a little boy, I lived here with my mom.” He swallowed hard. “That’s why I crashed the party. I wanted to see it.”
“And knocking at the front door and asking permission was too much trouble?” Darshi asked.
Nick, or whoever he was, rocked from his heels to his toes and back again. Head hanging, eyes on the concrete floor, he said, “Honestly, I didn’t plan any of it. I was at a party yesterday afternoon, down on Corn Hill Beach. I took a walk, and I saw the caterers and the tent people doing the setup, and I figured I’d find someone to ask and see if there was any way they’d let me take a look inside.”
I breathed in the cool, musty air, remembering one of the first things Nick had asked: Are you staying in the big house? My cheeks got hot. “So I was your way in,” I said. Of course, I thought. Of course I was a means to an end. Of course this cute guy with his wind-burned cheeks wasn’t into me. Of course he’d only wanted a way into the house. “Why didn’t you just ask me? I would have given you a tour.”
Looking shamefaced, Nic
k said, “I probably should have. And I’m sorry I didn’t.” He reached for my hand. Darshi gave him a hard look. He let his arm drop. “I swear. I wasn’t planning on, um, you know.” The tips of his ears looked pink as he cleared his throat and rocked again. “Things just happened. I was walking on the beach, and I saw you and Drue coming down the stairs, and at first I thought she’d recognize me, but she didn’t—”
“So you did know Drue,” I said.
He nodded. “We went to sailing camp together, like I said.” He looked at Darshini. “Are you Daphne’s roommate?” I’d told him about Darshi the night before, about how she’d been at Lathrop with Drue and me, and how we shared an apartment.
“Never mind who I am. How about you tell us your name?” Darshi said. “Your real one.”
“Nick Carvalho,” he said. No hesitation, no glance up and to the left, no tugging at his ears or fidgeting with his shirt or jamming his hands in his pockets. If he was lying, he was good at it. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Darshi pull out her phone.
“I lived here with my mother until I was four years old,” Nick said. “I don’t have too many specific memories, but I remember…” He pulled in a breath and rubbed his eyes. “My mom used to mark my height against the wall down here,” he said, and pointed to the side of the doorway, where I could see a series of lines in faint pencil. “I wanted to see if the marks were still there.”
“Aidan,” said Darshi. Nick flinched. I turned to see her staring at him, with her phone glowing in her hand.
“You’re Aidan Killian, aren’t you?” she said. “You’re Christina Killian’s son.”
The names tickled something way at the back of my brain. They didn’t mean anything to me yet, but they obviously meant something to Nick. Or Aidan. Or whoever he was. His tanned skin seemed to go a little pale in the lightbulb’s glow, and his body seemed to shrink in on itself, with his chest sinking and his chin dipping down. He bent his head and gave a slow, defeated nod. “Yes,” he said. “That’s right.”
Big Summer Page 21