by Jean Stone
“No,” she replied, gesturing toward Kevin’s truck. “That one is. I was just checking to see if this belongs to a friend. He was on the island last week, but he left . . .” She knew she was rambling; she only hoped she sounded a little believable.
“License and registration, please.”
His request was ordinary, with no cause for alarm. Until she quickly remembered she’d not only left Kevin’s pickup running, but she had no idea where the registration was.
“Well,” she said weakly, walking back to the truck, “I have my license, but the truck belongs to my brother.”
The officer didn’t comment; she now felt totally intimidated. Should she mention John’s name? How well did the state police and the local ones know each other? More than likely, very well. But would it help? Or could she get arrested for trying to influence a cop?
She opened the passenger door of the cab, hoping that the registration was in the glove box. She tried to pull it open, but it was locked. She smiled at the officer, reached across the seat, turned off the ignition, and removed the keys, which jangled as she fumbled, probing for a small one that might fit the lock. She wondered why a man who had sold his company and did not have a viable job would need to have so many keys.
She found a silver one. By then her hand was trembling, though she had no idea why. She hadn’t done anything wrong. Not really.
With a half turn of the key, the lid flopped down. But her relief was quickly thwarted as she, and the officer, looked into the compartment. There, sitting alone and looking less than innocent, was a gun, as shiny as the wide brim on the state police hat.
“You have a permit for that?” the officer asked.
Annie’s stomach cramped again, the way it had when she’d read John’s dismissive text. But now she pressed her hand against it, leaned to one side, and promptly threw up.
Chapter 20
“How was I supposed to know you had a gun?”
“It’s a pistol, Annie. I never thought I had to tell you. It’s not a big deal.”
“It feels like a big deal. It felt like a big deal when I threw up on the statie’s shoes. It felt like a big deal when he snapped the handcuffs around my wrists and ‘escorted’ me into the back of his police car. It felt like a big deal when Officer Williams—that’s his name, in case you’d like to know—paraded me through the police station in front of several people—some of whom probably know John and might have recognized me as his . . . whatever.”
“I told you, I’m sorry. When you asked to borrow the truck, I was talking to Taylor . . . I’d had a beer . . . I wasn’t thinking . . .”
“Mr. MacNeish?” Officer Williams came back to the area where he’d told Annie to sit on a wooden bench and wait. Taylor had given Kevin a ride to the Oak Bluffs barracks. At least the woman had the sense to wait outside. Or maybe Kevin had told her to.
Kevin stood up.
“Okay,” the officer said, “you’re all set. Sorry for the confusion.”
“No, officer,” Kevin said, “I’m the one who’s sorry. Annie needed a vehicle, and it never occurred to me . . .”
“Not a problem. The glove box was locked, so that was good. And the handgun wasn’t loaded. I know you’re licensed to conceal, but you might want to make sure it stays locked up while you’re on the island. There’s really no need for it here.”
“Yes, sir,” Kevin said, though the officer was at least ten years his junior. Annie wondered if he was going to salute him.
“One more thing. Ms. Sutton?”
She stood next to Kevin. “Yes?”
“Your friend. The one who owns a Porsche? What was his name again?”
Once he’d seen the gun, he seemed to have forgotten that she’d been scoping out the Porsche. “Colin,” she said now. “Colin Littlefield. He has a house next door to me on Chappy. I live at the Flanagan place.”
“Year-ro und?”
“Yes. Well, I thought it was. It’s a long story, but I’m working on it.” She didn’t think he’d care to hear about her housing woes. He might, after all, have some of his own.
“Well, I don’t know Mr. Littlefield, but I do know that isn’t his car. The registration is not in his name.”
More than being surprised, Annie was baffled. She wanted to ask whose name was on the registration but didn’t want to push what little luck she might have left. Besides, she figured he wouldn’t tell her, anyway, thanks to privacy issues and all that.
“Thank you,” she said. “I’m sorry for all your trouble.”
The officer nodded once and said, “Have a nice evening,” as if they’d just met at a cocktail party.
Kevin nodded back, took Annie by the elbow, and guided her to the front door. Once outside, she said, “I can’t believe you have a gun. Care to tell me why?”
“No special reason, other than I live in the city. And I used to own a business. Sometimes I had cash on me. I got a permit for protection. If it’s any comfort to you, this is the first time anyone—other than me and the guy who sold it to me—has seen the damn thing. But what’s the deal with you? I can’t believe you went to the airport looking for Littlefield. For God’s sake, Annie, he could be a murderer.”
She shook off his hand. “As far as any of us know, he hasn’t killed anyone. Yet. And I would have asked you to come with me, but you were too wrapped up with Taylor, and I really don’t want her knowing any of this. Did you tell her?”
“Not a word. I promise.”
As if on cue, Taylor got out of her pickup. “Everything all right now?”
“A misunderstanding,” Kevin said. “Do you mind driving us to the airport so I can get my truck?”
“Climb in. There’s not much room in the cab, but you two are family, so I don’t suppose you’ll be freaked out by the tight quarters.”
Annie couldn’t remember what Taylor might or might not know about the brief history of her connection to Kevin, but right then, it seemed like the last thing she wanted the woman to dissect.
* * *
Annie and Kevin didn’t speak again until they were inside his truck, and Taylor had gone on her way. “I don’t suppose they gave you food in your cell,” he said matter-of-factly.
She laughed because he truly was one of the good guys. “I wasn’t in a cell.”
“I know. I was trying to break the ice. In case you were still pissed at me.”
“I’m not pissed at you, Kevin. And, no, I did not have any food. No lunch. Or dinner, since it’s probably time for that. I’m starving.”
“Good. How do you feel about pizza?”
“Didn’t you and Taylor have a burger?”
“We’d just placed our order when you called from the pokey.”
Annie laughed again. “The pokey? You really are hilarious. But what about your girlfriend? Didn’t we just blow her off?”
“Not really. I’m taking her out for dinner tomorrow night.”
Annie waited for the punch line. When none came, she looked at him in disbelief. She’d referred to Taylor as his girlfriend as a joke. “Oh, my. You like her, don’t you?”
“Well, she is sort of different. I like that.”
“Sort of different” was an understatement when it came to Taylor. But Kevin was her brother. There was no guarantee that he would have chosen Brian—or, God help her, Mark—as a perfect match for her. But she bet he would have been supportive. So instead of telling him what she really felt, Annie said, “Good. Maybe you both deserve a little fun.” She looked back out the window, at the sky that was turning pink with the sunset. “But please, don’t mention anything to her about Fiona, okay? Until it’s straightened out, the fewer people who know, the safer everyone will be.”
He raised his right hand. “Scout’s honor. Now let’s get pizza. With all the restaurants on this island, it hadn’t occurred to me that someone could starve to death.”
“If your gun was loaded, you could always go hunting for our dinner. But not on Chappy. I’ve been to
ld there aren’t any squirrels there.”
“Very funny.”
“Thank you.”
They laughed together, and he pretended to cuff her on the arm—the way she had done to him—as if they were children.
“Besides,” he added, “now that you’ve uncovered my firearm, there’s something else about me it might be time for you to know.”
Annie stopped laughing and looked at her brother, trying to determine whether he was serious or simply teasing her again.
* * *
“It’s about my wife,” Kevin said, once they’d been seated at Edgartown Pizza and placed their order.
Annie took a long drink of ice water and tried to will away a sense of impending dread. She wanted to ask, “Did you shoot her?” because she thought that might be funny, but Kevin’s somber face warned her that the time for laughter had passed.
“What about your wife?” she asked. “Didn’t she . . . leave?”
“In a manner of speaking, yes. But not how you think. She didn’t pack up her things and walk away. It wasn’t like that.”
Then Annie had a terrible thought: Had his wife died, the way John had led Earl to believe? Deciding to let him tell his story without her interrupting, she waited, which wasn’t easy due to her penchant for curiosity. So much curiosity, her dad had often said with his endearing chuckle.
“You know I owned a construction company,” Kevin finally began.
She nodded.
“What you might not know is that Meghan—my wife—worked for me. Not in the office. She was one of my best workers in the field. In fact, she was a foreman.”
“Really?” Annie said. “Good for her.”
“She was good. And she loved it. Loved to get her hands dirty. Hell, I envied her. She had all the fun while I was mostly stuck in the office bidding on jobs, keeping the work coming in, dickering with vendors. I always thought the most important part of my job was to make sure everybody got paid every week. And that they stayed safe.”
Suddenly, Annie’s imagination usurped her curiosity. She thought for sure that Kevin was going to tell her his wife had run off with one of the construction guys. Someone younger, maybe. A bad boy straight out of a romance novel. But he’d said that Meghan hadn’t packed her things and left.
Had . . . had he shot her with his gun? If she’d died, was that how it happened? Annie wriggled on the chair. Her skin felt prickly. Just because no one but her brother and the guy who sold him the gun had seen it before she had, it didn’t mean Kevin didn’t shoot Meghan . . . in the back. After all, though he was Annie’s half brother, she hardly knew him. For that matter, she hardly knew her birth mother—their mother—either.
“We did a lot of big jobs,” he was saying. “Malls. Office buildings. That kind of thing. Three and a half years ago, just before Christmas, we were trying to meet a deadline up in Swampscott. We’d lost time because of bad weather. Anyway, Meghan was on the job. Up on scaffolding. Four floors aboveground. I warned her about the wind that day. I pleaded with her to take the day off. When that didn’t work, I told her to be extra careful. She was a perfectionist; she wanted to get the last of the windows in before the crew broke for the holiday. That’s what she was doing when the whole damn thing collapsed.”
So Meghan hadn’t left. She must be dead. Crushed in the scaffolding. Which would mean that John hadn’t been off base. And that Annie felt terrible for mocking it.
The pizza arrived. Kevin stared down at it as if not knowing where it had come from or why it was there.
And Annie reached across the table, touched his hand, and simply said, “Kevin. My God.”
He raised his head again and looked at her, his eyes glistening like the sun off the water. “After that, it was like I stepped onto the sidelines of my life. Out of action. On the bench. I’m only now starting to come around. Especially in these past few days.”
“Kevin, I’m so sorry. I can’t imagine what that was like. But I know what loss feels like. I lost my first husband, Brian, when we were still in our twenties. He was killed in a car accident. Did Donna tell you that?”
Kevin scowled. “Meghan isn’t dead.”
Now Annie was even more confused. “But . . .”
He stared down at the pizza again, his eyes moving from the peppers to the mushrooms to the pepperoni. “Mom insists on just telling people that I’m single again. Which makes it seem like I’m divorced. But I’m not. And Meghan’s still alive. She has traumatic brain injury. I guess she’s doing better physically, but she doesn’t recognize me.” He picked up his glass of water and set it down again without taking a sip.
“Kevin . . .”
“She’s in a long-term rehab facility in Vermont. It’s a nice place, but our insurance only covered two years. Now, it’s self-pay. Which is the real reason I sold my business. I used a chunk of it to set up a trust for her ongoing care.” His tears dripped onto the band of crust that circled the slices in front of him. “I should have stopped her from going up that day.”
Annie guessed it wasn’t the first time he’d said that. And many more times that he’d felt it. She knew that once guilt took hold of someone’s heart, it often was a long time before it loosened its grip. She’d seen it in Brian’s parents’ eyes, the guilt over having convinced him to stay a few minutes longer before he’d headed home to Annie. But he never made it. Sure, he’d been hit by a drunk driver, but if he’d only left five or ten or fifteen minutes earlier . . . there would always be that “but.”
“Do you still go to see her?” she asked.
“It’s been over a year since I did. Mom is the strong one in the family. She convinced me that I wasn’t helping Meghan, that I might even be making things harder for her. She said the time had come for me to let go and move on.” He gave her a halfhearted smile. “It’s taken a while, but here I am. Moving on.”
Annie remembered John’s remark that most people moved to the Vineyard either because they were in hiding or they were trying to start over. She wondered if Kevin might become part of the island, too. If he would find a new home there, the way that she had.Without further hesitation, she said, “I have an idea. Let’s ask them to box up the pizza and we’ll go to John’s. If you want, we can stay up all night and talk. Or watch stupid old movies. If you want to sleep, I can go into his daughters’ room. No matter what, you’ll know you’re not alone. Sometimes being alone really sucks.”
He laughed. “No kidding. But if you don’t mind, I’d be awful company and that would upset me more. Your offer means more than you’ll ever know. In fact, it makes me feel a whole lot better. But I think I should go home and go to bed. Tomorrow is a Monday, and I have a high-pressure job these days.” Not for the first time, Annie saw herself in his sensitive smile.
“Okay,” she said. “But only if you’re absolutely, positively sure.”
“I am. Honest.” He looked back at the pizza. On the half that faced him, he peeled off the pepperoni slices and stacked them on the other half. Then he signaled to the waitress. “May we have two boxes? She’ll take the half with the extra pepperoni.” The waitress left, and he turned back to Annie. “My stomach gets messed up when I’m upset.”
Like brother, like sister, Annie thought with a sad smile.
* * *
It was only nine o’clock when Annie finally got back to the cottage. Her body, however, felt as if she’d been up all night. Plugging her phone into the charger, she crawled into bed. The gift of sleep washed over her—just as her cell phone rang.
She almost didn’t answer it. She almost didn’t even roll onto her side and pick it up to see who was calling. But a quick thought of Kevin flashed into her mind, followed by one of Claire. And Earl. She hadn’t even thought of John, so she was befuddled when she lifted the phone and saw that it was him. Fear gripped her: Something bad must have happened.
“Jesus, Annie,” he said when she answered, “what the hell’s going on?”
Rubbing her eyes, she pulled herse
lf to a sitting position. It was hot in the bedroom; she realized she’d forgotten to turn on the fan as she always did to bring in the cool night breeze. “Everything’s fine.” She paused. “Isn’t it?”
“You tell me.”
Now she was really confused. “Well, I think your mother goes to rehab in the morning. That’s good, isn’t it?”
“This isn’t about my mother, Annie. It’s about you. What the hell are you doing with a gun?”
“I don’t have a gun.” Then her brain fog cleared and the weight of her body sank into the mattress. “Oh. That was Kevin’s gun. But don’t worry—he has a license.”
John fell silent. She wondered if he was sitting in his ex’s house or if he’d sneaked outside to talk as if he still was married and Annie was the other woman.
“How’s Lucy?” she asked.
“Don’t change the subject. Do you have any idea what it’s like to get a call from the state police telling me they’d brought you into custody? That you had a gun and said you were looking for Colin Littlefield?”
Oh, she thought again. That certainly verified that Officer Williams had known exactly who she was and about her relationship to John.
“Colin had nothing to do with the gun,” she said. “In fact, he’s still missing. No one’s seen him since the night of the Fourth. He probably went back to New York. It couldn’t have been easy for him to be at his ex-girlfriend’s wedding.” Annie was still amazed at how much Vineyarders knew about one another’s lives.
“Are you going to tell me the rest?”
Earlier that night, she’d wanted to share it all with him. But now she knew it would mean having to include everything that had happened since he’d left: how Fiona had been poisoned, for which the girl blamed her brother and now her sister, too; how the police—his coworkers—hadn’t yet responded even though there was a toxicology report; how Annie had decided to try and help the girl. But with everything John was going through, it seemed ridiculous to bother him with it all. Especially since she was so tired that she only wanted to sleep.
“Honestly, John, it was nothing. I was driving Kevin’s truck. I stopped because I thought I recognized Colin Littlefield’s Porsche.” There was no need to say she’d actually been searching for it. “A police car came along and asked me what I was doing. When he asked for my license and registration, I went into Kevin’s glove box for the registration and a gun was there. He has a permit. It wasn’t loaded. So it was just a mix-up. But please, tell me about Lucy. Did she . . . ?”