Death in the Off-Season

by Francine Mathews

  “Did you ask him about it?”

  “He told me he’d slept on the couch. And that I’d crashed my car the night before. I don’t remember doing it, Detective. I’ve been wondering, for days, if Sky did it himself—when he ran over Rusty. While I slept, drugged, at his hand.”

  “Would Sky shift the blame for murder like that?”

  “I don’t know,” Mayling said. “That’s the most horrible thing of all. I can’t bear to be with him, because of not knowing. And I’m too terrified to ask.”

  “Mayling,” Merry said, “what were you reading when Peter found you that morning?”

  She hesitated, blushed, and then looked away. “Sky’s letters,” she said. “He gets them, from his mother, every week. He never opens them. But I do.”

  She focused on the sea, letting the glare off the waves flood her sight. “I fill a kettle with water and wait for it to steam. Then I lift the envelope flap carefully with a nail file, read the letter, and put it back in the drawer where he keeps all of them, unopened. I keep hoping she’ll change her mind. But we’ll never know, will we, if he doesn’t read them?”

  “Change her mind about what?”

  She smiled bitterly. “Me. The mongrel whore from the garment district who’s not fit to marry her son. She’s never accepted our relationship. She never will.”

  Merry sat up. “After all these years of living together?”

  “You’d have to know Gwendolyn Tate-Jackson. A direct de­scendant of the New York Junker class, the Knickerbocker Club, the Four Hundred. I met her once,” Mayling said, “so I know what she is capable of.”

  “Racism.”

  Mayling laughed abruptly. “Sky brought me home to her Park Avenue apartment to announce our engagement. She made me wait in the kitchen with the housekeeper while she told Sky what she thought. Horrible, vituperative things. Sky never went back.”

  But he never married you, either, Merry thought.

  “I won’t force myself into a family that doesn’t want me,” Mayling said. “I’ve told Sky I’ll never marry him while his mother hates me so much. It would have a terrible impact on our kids.”

  Merry looked at the clothing designer a moment in silence. “Then she’s won, hasn’t she?” she said.

  Chapter 30

  The small prop plane out of Boston was the kind that didn’t have a stewardess or in-flight catering; and at takeoff, the right engine tugged so wildly in a different direction from the left that the pilot aborted the attempt, taxied off the runway, and pulled down a technical manual from the shelf above his head.

  Alison could see all of this because there was no curtain—much less a door—between the cockpit and the seven passengers, who’d been distributed in their seats according to weight. Panic surged from her feet to the roots of her hair as, his consultation finished, the pilot brought the plane back around to face the runway.

  I’m going to die, she thought. He looked at the owner’s manual, for God’s sake. Why did I ever, ever, come back?

  In the course of her constant travel she experienced all the stages of behavior common to terminally ill patients: Denial (I’m not really here, I’m really in my own bed); Anger (I’m too intelligent to be this afraid); Bar­gaining (If you just let me live this time, God, I’ll never get on a plane again); Depression (I’ve spent my whole life in pursuit of success, and my last meal will be airplane food); and finally, Acceptance (I’ve placed my life in the hands of a stranger, and that’s okay, really, that’s fine).

  The plane bumped and surged down the runway, both engines working in concert this time, and tentatively, diffidently, lifted into the air. Allison’s panic increased. She gripped the bottom of her seat and wished desperately for in-flight catering. She hated flying without a drink.

  Peter was leaning against a pillar, losing a battle with his calm, when she appeared at the gate, and for several seconds, he looked past her. He was searching for a college kid with long, unstyled hair and a grace­ful dancer’s frame, wearing jeans or a loose sundress with a cardigan sweater. He was looking for the past, and the present arrived.

  “Peter!”

  The voice riveted him, as it always had. He cast about wildly.

  “Here!”

  She stood barely ten yards from him, a wide grin on her face, any strangeness banished by the sudden joy of seeing him.

  The years had dealt indif­ferently with Alison, writing lines across her forehead, sharpening the jut of her cheekbones, shafting her dark hair with premature strands of gray. The dancer’s body looked now like an athlete’s—less graceful than it was strong. She was dressed in black linen capris and a leather jacket; her flats were discreetly Italian and very chic. She had become the sort of woman he would admire from a distance and find disturbingly self-sufficient. He walked toward her and didn’t know what to say when he arrived.

  He settled for the safest gesture of his genteel child­hood—the airy brushing of cheek against cheek, as though he were an art dealer and she a very special client. “You look wonderful.”

  She saw the arm in the sling then. “Take a fall from a horse?”

  “Something like that. I’ll tell you about it later. How was the flight?”

  “Godawful. They always are. I’m never so thankful, or breathless, as when I emerge alive from a plane. I didn’t actually expect you to meet me, Peter, but it’s good to see you. I remember this airport isn’t that far from town. I hope I’m not inconveniencing you with the drive . . .” She was speaking rapidly, trying to fill silence, a cover for her nervous­ness, he knew.

  “Not at all,” he said. “I’m parked right out front. Is this your only bag?”

  “I’ve learned to travel light,” she said.

  What he heard was, I’m not staying long.

  She didn’t speak much in the Rover, just let the setting sun strike her cheek in lengthening red rays. The soft island wind flooded the open window with the scent of the sea and the faintest whiff of pine and heather off the moors. Peter, still steering and shifting with one hand, gave her a few bad moments; but the Old South Road was straight and empty enough for erratic driving, and she relaxed. It had been so long since she had smelled these smells and felt this tranquility emanating from the very shingles of the houses. Unbeknownst to herself, she sighed deeply, and Peter gave her a look from the corner of his eye.

  “You must be worn out. It’s a long trip from California.”

  “Made worse by fear of flying,” she said. “I’m completely drained when I get off a plane. I can barely walk. But this place makes up for everything. It’s so restful, Peter. I know I’ll sleep well tonight.”

  “Where are you staying?” he said.

  “I hadn’t thought about a hotel, to tell you the truth—I got Sky’s call and caught a plane in a matter of hours.” Too late, she heard how her words must sound to him—as though she were fishing for lodging. She bit her lip and looked at him quickly. He was gathering himself to open his home to her, and she could see the effort it cost him.

  “You’re welcome to stay—”

  “How about if we try that historic brick place in town?” she broke in hurriedly.

  He was silent an instant, regrouping. “The Jared Coffin House.”

  “That’s it.”

  Constraint fell between them. He downshifted at the rotary and struggled with the wheel.

  “What happened to your shoulder?”

  “Somebody took a shot at me,” he said casually. His gray eyes flicked over to hers, then moved back to the road. “What took you to California?”

  End of conversation about the killer, Alison thought, and drew in a sharp breath. “I’d run out of alternatives. I’d tried everywhere else. And I managed to get a job, one reason I stayed.”

  “Doing what?”

  “News reporting. For the second-largest newspaper in the s
tate.” She laughed. “Trust me to choose a dying profes­sion. Print journalism has the half-life of a dead fish, particularly in California, where anything that happened yesterday qualifies as his­tory. I don’t know, Peter—sometimes I think about going back to school, getting a law degree, maybe—and then I wonder whether I’m too old.”

  “Never ask that question, Alison. As­sume you can do anything, and you will.”

  She studied his set face an instant, wondering what nerve she’d touched, then stared out at Orange Street. “Peter, this town has grown so much,” she exclaimed.

  “Nantucket has become the Hamptons,” he said wryly. “You left at the right time.”

  “I’ll always miss this island,” she said impulsively. “I’ll carry it with me forever.”

  Her words wrung Peter’s heart.

  “The things we’ve loved deeply never leave us, Alison,” he said. “That’s their special curse.”

  This time, she didn’t dare look at him.

  A week after Labor Day, and a Sunday evening at that, Alison had the pick of the rooms at the Jared Coffin House. Peter left her there with her luggage; she was still on California time and thought it too early to eat. For his part, he was flushed with weariness, the only word he could put to the sense of loss he’d felt during the ride into town. Alison was a stranger, complete in her own life, and the woman he’d loved was just a memory.

  He threw the car into gear with his good arm and maneuvered his way up Centre Street, searching for a spot to turn around. Then he idled an instant in the road, and came to a decision. He would visit the house.

  Mid-September twilight was coming down over the streets of town, and with it, a briskness to the air. Yel­low light spilled out of a few windows, and straggling tourists—a father with a child trudging at his heels, a mother following along behind—ducked down the cobblestones in search of home. The season had come to its natural end. Houses owned by off-islanders, like children left too late on an empty playground, showed lost and darkened faces to the street. He urged the Rover farther and farther into the dusk, until the sidewalks dropped away and the terrain began to climb. He was on the Cliff Road.

  The Mason house stood—as it had for a century and a half—on high ground overlooking Nantucket Sound. Lonely women had paced its hallways and hung by its windows, waiting and craning to see the first small flare of a sail on the horizon. Whale oil had paid for its wood and bricks, shipped over the seas to the island; and whale oil had filled it with treasure, a monument to the power of Nantucket’s captains and the Mason name. Now his father’s estate kept the empty house habitable; only the Whitney children ran through its rooms, and then only for a few weeks each summer. His mother had not come to the island since her husband’s death.

  He turned off the ignition and sat a moment in the stillness of the gravel drive, the hedges and the height of the roof walk dreaming in the darkness. The sun had gone down completely now, and he moved like a memory himself, through the opening in the hedge and down the walk of crushed quahog shells. The hy­drangeas—dark mounds of secret coolness—were pocketed with last blooms. He heard the surf, far below off Jetties Beach, and the tearing cries of gulls diving toward evening.

  At the doorway he stopped, and craned his neck back to stare up at the windows: the last light was glimmering off the old panes. The keys to the house were in the Rover’s glove compartment, but he had no desire to walk through the empty rooms. Instead, he turned and made his way around to the back terrace, and the lawns that stretched to the fence at the cliff’s edge. Beyond it, Nantucket Sound swept to the horizon, alive and wavering under a rising moon.

  He stopped at the edge of the flagstones and pulled up a wrought-iron chair. A flaking of rust came away in his palm. Uncaring, he turned the chair toward the sea. He was alone in the midst of the world and the night, and he was at peace.

  Here on this lawn he had beaten George at croquet, with the set she’d been given for her eighth birthday, rocketing her bright orange ball from the terrace to the fence until she howled with disappoint­ment. He had trained his first dog—a chocolate Labrador named Mud Pie—to dig up his mother’s roses. In the shadow of the hedge his father had taught him how to swing a golf club; he had chipped a ball through the kitchen window. He had set off firecrackers near the hurricane cel­lar and thrown water balloons at Rusty’s head from the safety of the roof walk. Now George’s children rediscovered the rituals of gener­ations of Masons, unaware that the endless days of their summer months were already passing into memory. He envied and pitied them at once.

  He stood up and walked slowly down the lawn toward the sea. This was where the tent had stood, and the dance floor with the carefully draped tables; here the guests flown in from New York and the jazz or­chestra. He ignored their ghosts and moved beyond, to the circle of moonlight falling on the grass just past the tent’s farthest stake. Long after the fireworks had ended and the guests had gone home—when the others had fallen into bed and a dreamless sleep—he had danced with Alison in the moonlight, a slow, endless waltz that had ended in their lovemaking. The earth had been damp with the falling dew and tangy with salt spray; her skin had still held the heat of her sunburn. The surf had broken in tumult against the pilings of Jetties Beach, and he had desired nothing so much in his life as her skin under his hands.

  The first two years after it all ended, when he was living in this house alone, he had returned to this spot as a tongue seeks a damaged tooth, probing the pain. He had never failed to find it. He shivered now in the darkness and turned back to the house. The emptiness of the place was too vivid. His father was gone, Rusty was dead, and his mother estranged; Alison had moved beyond him. It was time for Mason Farms, and sleep.

  Halfway to the terrace he stopped, alert to a change in the listening stillness of the empty house: he was no longer alone. The throbbing in his left shoulder mounted to a crescendo of warning. Someone was sitting in the wrought-iron chair he had left on the terrace.

  “Hello, Peter,” Alison said, her voice low and filled with calm, like darkness made human. “So you came back, too.”

  Chapter 31

  Merry’s Explorer came to a rolling stop next to the weathered obelisk standing in the center of upper Main Street. She jumped out, her arms filled with late dahlias culled from Ralph Waldo’s flower beds. Six o’clock on a Monday morning, a bright September day by the look of things, and ten hours of solid sleep had cleared her head. She glanced back down Main to the business district, searching for too-observant eyes; but there was little traffic abroad as yet. The town was gripped in the early stillness she loved. Quickly, she hiked her right leg over the wrought-iron chain that set the war memorial off from the cobblestoned street and laid the dahlias at its base in a plastic vase of water. Twelve years ago on this day, Billy had pushed Rafe away from an IED in Fallujah. Her father wouldn’t come here, she knew; Billy’s name wasn’t even on the memorial, at the police chief’s request. John Folger had hated the Iraq war. The death of his son was an unforgivable waste, not some­thing to venerate.

  Merry had mixed feelings about the war memorial. Billy was buried in Arlington National Cemetery. This was the only place on Nantucket she could place late flowers tended by the grandfather Billy had loved. She reached out a hand to touch the rough stone briefly, her throat con­stricting, and then she turned to go.

  She had been awakened from her nap the previous evening by a call from Rafe, holding vigil with Tess at Mass General. His time for conversation was short. He needed clothes for Tess—of course, she had flown out on Will’s helicopter with nothing—and a shirt or two of his own. He’d tried to reach Peter, but the guy must have taken the phone off the hook—nobody at the farm was answering. Would she stop by the Greengage and pick up some things? And then drive out to the farm, maybe, for his? Whenever she could manage it. He’d pick ’em up from the Cape Air kiosk at Logan that evening. Or maybe, if Peter planned
to come over to the hospital, he could bring the clothes with him . . .

  There was no change in Will.

  So here she was, groping for Tess’s spare key in the hiding place behind a shingle, letting herself into the kitchen of the deserted Greengage. It looked far different today than it had the previous week, when Merry had met Tess over her melon salsa and muffin tins; the stove was cold and the room unlit. Tess had been called out to Cottage Hospital Friday night in the midst of her dishes; Sammy and Regina had cleaned up after her. The large pots were upended, like discarded party hats, to drain on the counters. After the brightness of the fall day, the half-light of the kitchen dampened Merry’s spirits.

  A light tapping on the panes of the back door made her jump, and she turned around quickly. A boy’s face was framed in the glass. At the sight of her it took on an expression of caution and reserve she recog­nized. He’d have seen the Explorer outside, with its Nantucket police shield.

  “Hi,” she said as she hauled open the door. “What can I do for you?”

  “Is Will home, ma’am?”

  “Nope.” She smiled at him, hoping he’d relax. “Who are you?”

  “I—I go to school with him. Will he be back soon, d’ya know? It’s kind of important.”

  His voice broke embarrassingly on the last word. A boy on the verge of being something else, she thought, and pretty bad at it. Broad shoulders that were no match for his skinny waist and legs. She studied his face, not knowing this one, but conscious she had seen him before. Then it dawned on her.

  “You’re the football player,” she said.

  He flushed. “Yeah.”

  Merry stuck out her hand. “I’m Detective Folger.”

  “Sandy Stewart,” he said. “Is Will’s mom around?”