The Labor Day Murder

by Lee Harris

  A Fawcett Gold Medal Book

  Published by The Ballantine Publishing Group

  Copyright © 1998 by Lee Harris

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by The Ballantine Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.

  http://www.randomhouse.com

  Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 98-96035

  ISBN 9780449150177

  eBook ISBN 9781101968390

  v4.1

  a

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Epigraph

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Dedication

  Acknowledgements

  By Lee Harris

  There is no fire without some smoke.

  Proverbes

  JOHN HEYWOOD

  1497–1580

  PROLOGUE

  There are words that sear our innards when we hear them, especially if accompanied by a piercing scream. I have heard such words and I remember each instance with the horror they evoked that first moment. The frantic cry of “Mommy!” by a lost or hurt child. “Look out!” shouted as someone steps off a curb. A cry of “Help!” from someone walking a city street on a dark night.

  Most recently it was a bloodcurdling scream followed by the single word “Fire!” on a beautiful beach near dusk as summer came to a happy and noisy end. I remember looking toward the town that bordered the beach, then up to where dark smoke was furling like a tornado in the darkening sky and I remember, too, thinking, Those poor people. Their house will never be the same.

  I had no idea who the people were or where exactly the house was, except that it was north of where we were standing, and slightly to the west. And I could not have imagined, as the men in the fire brigade started running from the beach, that the house that was burning was the least of it, that much worse had happened than a house fire, that the lives of a small group of people on that island would never be the same after the smoke settled and the water ran off and the truth was uncovered. If it could be uncovered.

  —

  And later, when it was dark, there would be the shadow up on the dune, the dusky figure of someone sitting, facing the ocean, and a glow that brightened and waned, brightened and waned. At the beginning, I had no idea who or what it was. At the end, it was what I remembered best.

  1

  I have always been a child of summer. While others prefer to ski and ice skate, my pleasure is to swim and garden. The house I inherited from Aunt Meg is a stone’s throw from the Long Island Sound and since moving in, I’ve spent many wonderful hours on the little cove nearby, both in and out of the water. But even though we have a big backyard and a wonderful beach, we jumped at the invitation that dropped in our laps one fine spring day.

  “Chris,” my friend and neighbor Melanie Gross said over the telephone that morning, “something’s come up and Hal and I can’t use my uncle’s house on Fire Island the end of August. Do you think you and Jack and little Eddie would like to go in our place?”

  The first thing out of my mouth was, “Fire Island—that’s somewhere off Long Island, isn’t it?”

  “It’s a barrier island a few miles off the southern shore of Long Island, a long, skinny strip of land with one village after another, a small state park at the western end, and a lot of park at the eastern end. There are no cars, Jack can leave his jackets and ties at home, it’s just a lot of fun and sun and leisure.”

  “It sounds wonderful. Why aren’t you and Hal going?”

  “One of his old buddies from law school is getting married in California and we decided to make a vacation out of it. We’re flying out a week or so before the wedding, which is Labor Day weekend. And my uncle’s going to Europe so he offered us the house. I already asked him if you guys could take it instead.”

  “It sounds like a dream, Mel. Jack has that last week of August and first week of September off—he put in for it a long time ago—so I know we’re free.”

  “Great. I’ll tell Uncle Max it’s a deal.”

  I remember saying, “I should ask Jack first,” but Mel pooh-poohed that.

  “He’ll say yes. I know him.”

  And she was right. He loved the idea. He said he hadn’t been to Fire Island since his wild youth—since he’s only a little past thirty I wasn’t sure how long ago he was talking about and decided not to ask—and he thought it would be a great place to spend a vacation, especially now that we had Eddie, who would be about nine months old when we went.

  For me it was more than a vacation; it was an opportunity to expand my world. Having spent fifteen years of my life in a convent, from the age of fifteen to the age of thirty, I had traveled very little and vacationed mostly with my aunt in the house Jack and I now owned. And although I’ve been a secular person for three years and married for two of them, I’ve never quite gotten over all the years of leaving home with fifty cents in my pocket, which meant that a vacation that cost little was very appealing.

  So that was how we ended up on Fire Island at the end of August. It was everything Mel had promised, and a lot more. The vacation began on a hot, breezy day in August with the ferry trip from Bay Shore, Long Island out to the island. For about thirty wonderful minutes we crossed the bay out to Blue Harbor, a small community toward the western end of the thirty-two-mile strip of land that was Fire Island. We sat upstairs on the deck for a few minutes and then I took Eddie downstairs and inside, my worries about the bright sun overcoming my strong desire to feel both it and the breeze on my skin.

  From the open window we could see the weathered dock and the little gray frame building with the words “Blue Harbor” painted on it. Off to the right, in a kind of breezeway, hung wagon after wagon, the transportation of choice on Fire Island, waiting for their owners to unlock them and load them with luggage. The slightly bumpy end to our voyage as the ferry hit the dock caused a few tears, but Eddie recovered quickly when we put him in his stroller and walked off the boat.

  Mel had passed along a ring of necessary keys a few weeks earlier, along with several pages of instructions. We found the family wagon hanging among all the other family carts and wagons and unlocked the padlock with ease. Traveling with a baby meant carrying all sorts of necessities that didn’t quite fit in the wagon, but being resourceful people, we distributed things around the stroller and Jack managed to push a suitcase with one hand and pull the wagon with the other as we walked on the narrow lanes and streets to the Margulies house.

  The sidewalks, if you could call them that, were all of four feet wide, and with the exception of one or two streets, were made of wood like a boardwalk. The first thing I noticed as we started our walk was that no one seemed to have stairs in this village. Every house we passed had a ramp up to a deck, and people on bicycles, ringing their handlebar bells to signal their
approach, zipped up and down the ramps. It was no wonder there were no cars. I’ve never seen one narrow enough to fit on those streets.

  The second thing that drew my attention was the many beautiful, gnarled pine trees that seemed to grow on every lawn, half hiding the houses behind them. And there were tall grasses, maybe as much as ten feet tall or more, that marked property boundaries. Although the houses were not far apart, I could see that looking into your neighbor’s yard would not be easy. In other words, there was lots of privacy.

  In walking to our vacation home we actually crossed the width of the island from the bay beach on the north to the sea beach on the south in a matter of minutes. About halfway there, we crossed Main Street, the widest street in the village at no more than six or eight feet. This, Mel had told me, was where the Labor Day Parade would go by, something we should not miss. I took a deep breath of the salt breeze and vowed not to miss it.

  “Our” house, the one owned by Max Margulies, Mel’s paternal uncle, was a grander affair than I had expected. The last house on Park Street, made of wood that had weathered naturally, and mounted on stilts like most of the houses in the village, it sat high on the dune that led to the beach, giving a clear view of the beach and the ocean beyond it. It had two stories, with a wraparound deck on the first floor, and a kind of tower at the right-hand end as you faced it from the dune, a widow’s walk circling the tower on the second story. There was a door that I later learned led to the kitchen, and facing the ocean, a front door.

  We pulled all our rolling vehicles up the ramp at the back and around to the front door. Inside, we were enchanted. The huge living room that overlooked the deck, the beach, and the Atlantic was furnished in comfortable, cotton-covered chairs and sofas of cane, and the floor, a gleaming affair of polished wood strips, was partly covered with sisal and cotton area rugs. Eddie could crawl to his heart’s content without destroying anybody’s fine furniture or carpets.

  Upstairs there was actually a room with a crib, just as Mel had promised, and there were other bedrooms, including the one with the widow’s walk, which would accommodate Jack and me more than comfortably. We dropped our suitcases and went back downstairs to see the rest of the first floor.

  The kitchen was a dream. It was the other half of the first floor after the living room, with a large butcher-block table at one end and everything you always wanted in a kitchen at the other end. A Peg-Board near the door to the deck had several hooks on it and I hung our spare house key on one of them. In case we went in different directions, we would each have a key.

  “I thought Mel said people lived simply out here,” Jack said, as awed as I by the appliances and space.

  “I guess Uncle Max thinks this is simplicity. I hope you’re still looking forward to cooking.”

  “Hey, I wouldn’t miss it.”

  We had carried along a plentiful supply of steaks, hamburgers, fish, and other easy-to-grill foods so we wouldn’t have to shop locally and pay high prices. On the bay side of the village, Mel had promised, there was a grocery store where we could replenish our resources if we had to, albeit for a price. But this was a great improvement over the situation twenty or more years ago, she had said, when all food had to be imported from the mainland.

  We took everything out of the bags and cold box we had brought and filled the freezer and refrigerator while Eddie explored the kitchen floor and banged a pot noisily.

  “I think I’m going to love it,” Jack said, as the last item went inside.

  I scooped Eddie off the floor and gave him a hug. “I already do,” I said.

  2

  It was a relaxing week with perfect weather and warm sea water. We decided to walk every inch of Blue Harbor and we did, saying hello to everyone we met along the way, a remarkably friendly group of people, mostly homeowners but many just there for the week or weekend.

  Next door to us, going back toward the bay, were families that had been coming to Fire Island for years. Across the street were a couple of larger, older houses that the owners had rented out to groups, to the consternation of the nearby owners, and I have to admit, to our own. The people were young and friendly, but they were up late and very noisy. Their garbage overflowed the cans and lay on the ground till it was picked up. There were disagreements between members of the groups that flared into shouting matches, sometimes causing us to burst into laughter. They seemed to argue about the silliest, most mundane things, mostly whose turn it was to do some chore that apparently no one wanted to do.

  But when we ran into them on the beach or on the street or in the grocery store over on the bay side, they were smiling and pleasant.

  We found the village had a large freshwater pool and I started swimming there every afternoon. Eddie also preferred the freshwater to the salt, and by the end of the week I was sure he was on his way to being a swimmer. Not bad for a little boy who hadn’t yet stood on his own two feet!

  Jack indulged one of his deepest desires and did all the cooking, a double pleasure for me because I’m not very good at it and I consider it work. I decided not to think about pounds added till we were home, and from the way Jack ate, he must have made the same decision.

  On the Saturday that marked a week since our arrival, we started out on a morning walk as we had done each day, waving to our neighbors, the Jorgensens, and then their neighbors, the Wagners. When we reached the bay we took a turn and found ourselves in front of what looked like a firehouse.

  “I never thought about community services,” I said. “But I guess you can’t live without a fire department, even on an island.”

  “They probably get a kitchen fire every once in a while. Let’s go in and show Eddie the fire engine.”

  The door was open and we went inside. Sure enough, there were two fire trucks in there, bright red with ladders and other equipment, and a couple of smaller vehicles, just like at home in Oakwood. These looked as though they had been polished moments before.

  “Good morning,” a man’s voice said.

  I turned to see a nice-looking man in cutoffs and a bright pink shirt walking into the garage with a bucket in one hand and a bunch of rags in the other. “I’m Chris Brooks, and this is my husband, Jack.”

  The men shook hands.

  “I’m Ken Buckley, glad to meet you. And who’s this little fella?”

  “This is Eddie,” Jack said, and Ken Buckley gave our son a practiced tickle that caused giggles.

  “I remember when mine were that size,” he said with a grin. “A lot less trouble than they are now. You folks renters?”

  “We’re staying in Max Margulies’s house,” I said.

  “Oh, right. I heard Max was having guests for the end of August. I hope you’re staying for Labor Day.”

  “We are,” Jack said. “It’s our first vacation in a while and it’s been great.”

  “Nothing’s better than Fire Island, and Blue Harbor’s as good a village as they come. Don’t miss our parade on Monday. It’s the last blowout of the season.”

  “We heard,” I said.

  “And the party on the beach afterward. Courtesy of the Blue Harbor Fire Department.” He held his hands out expansively.

  “Of which you’re a member.”

  “Of which I’m chief. Max is one of our inactive members. Basically it means he’s over sixty. You turn sixty and you’re inactive. Unless we need you.” He smiled.

  “Where’d you get your training?” Jack asked.

  “A fire school on Long Island, very high-tech. We keep pretty up-to-date with drills on the beach. Haven’t had a fire since two summers ago when some weekend renters smoked in bed.”

  “Were they all right?” I asked.

  “We got them out but the house was a mess. Everything’s wood around here and it had been a dry month. What wasn’t burned was soaked. Anyway, that’s history. How’re you enjoying Max’s mansion?”

  I left Jack to banter while I showed Eddie the fire engines. These were the first motorized vehicles I�
�d seen since we got off the ferry. Even the taxis around here were boats, and I wondered how something as big as these fire engines could get around.

  When Eddie lost interest, I went back to where the two men were still chatting. “I hope we didn’t leave any prints on your nice, clean fire engines,” I said.

  “Not to worry. They’ll be gleaming for the parade.”

  “How do you move them around the village? The streets must be too narrow and most of them are made of wood.”

  “We’ve got a concrete street that crosses from the bay to the ocean and Main Street runs from east to west. Otherwise, we use the beach. If we get stuck in the sand—and we do—forty of us get together and lift ’er right up.”

  Jack and I laughed. “That must be something to see.”

  “Won’t happen at the parade. We’ll roll right down Main Street.”

  “We’ll be there,” Jack said.

  —

  “How big a parade could it be?” I asked, when we were back outside. “It’s such a small community.”

  “Roughly three hundred fifty houses,” Jack said. “He was telling me about it while you were leaving prints on his fire engines. About fourteen hundred people, less during the week, more on the weekends. But it’s close to capacity right now. Even the men take the end of August off.”

  “Even cops.”

  “Cops who thought ahead and put in for the time when the snow was this high.” He held his hand at a level I had never seen snow reach. “He said Mel’s Uncle Max was the chief back in the Eighties for a few years. He made it sound like the firemen are some kind of royalty. Anyway, there’ll be a high school band from the mainland and then late in the afternoon, the party.”

  “Do we need tickets?”

  “He said it’s the fire company’s gift to the community.”

  “Sounds great. Let’s walk over to the store and get some milk before they’re all sold out. It’s a big weekend and everyone’s going to want to cook.”

  “Especially me.”