Close to the Bone

by William G. Tapply

  None of them took notice of me, so I wandered down to the water. Half a dozen Coast Guard vessels of various sizes and configurations were moored there, along with a few other boats.

  One was a Boston Whaler. I moved out onto the end of the short dock and read Olivia on her transom. From what I could see, she had not been bunged up at all.

  I looked around, but still nobody seemed to be paying any attention to me. So I sat on the edge of the dock and slid aboard Olivia.

  She was a sixteen- or seventeen-footer, with a center console, no cabin, shallow draft. A good boat to fish from, broad-beamed, high-sided, and open, but not made for the high seas. A tall antenna poked up from the console, and I remembered fly casting from the bow in the wind and snagging my line on it. Sure. Olivia had a radio, so if Paul had been in trouble, he’d have called for help. But Lieutenant Kirschenbaum hadn’t mentioned any Mayday call from Paul, so I assumed he’d made none.

  Whatever happened had happened suddenly and without warning.

  I looked around the inside of the boat. Shipshape, the way Paul liked it. The rods with both level-wind and spinning reels were racked neatly in their holders along the gunwales. The lines were coiled and the bumpers stowed. I lifted the lid of the built-in bait box at the stern, but it was empty. So was the fish box beside it. I lifted the hatch in the bow and counted the life jackets. There were four, which was the number he always carried.

  I went back to the console. I noticed that the key was in the ignition. The dry storage at its base was empty. It’s where Paul always kept his tackle box.

  I sat on the seat behind the wheel and lit a cigarette. No bait, no tackle box. It was puzzling.

  “Can I help you, sir?”

  I looked up. It was the ponytailed volleyball player.

  “How can you do that without skinning your knees?” I said.

  She frowned. She looked to be about Billy’s age. My older son had just turned twenty-one. “Pardon me?” she said.

  “The way you were diving on the court for the ball.”

  She smiled. “You’ve gotta know how to do it.” She hesitated. “You’re not supposed to be here. This isn’t your boat, is it?”

  “No. It belongs to a friend of mine.”

  “You better come up.” She held her hand down to me. I took it and she helped me climb back onto the dock. “They brought her in last night some time,” she said. “Found her adrift.”

  “I know. My friend was probably on it.”

  “Oh, geez,” she said. “I thought it had just busted a mooring or something.”

  “No,” I said. “It was launched from a trailer. I’m just trying to figure out what might’ve happened.”

  “One of the guys was talking about it,” she said. “They got a call a little after midnight. Someone spotted her with nobody aboard. So they went out and brought her in. She was just the way she is now. Ignition and radio both off. No anchor over the side.”

  “And no bait and no tackle box.”

  She cocked her head. “So?”

  “My friend used her for fishing. He’s a bait fisherman. He wouldn’t go out without some eels or bunker or whatever the bait of the hour might be. He always brought bait with him.”

  She shrugged. “Maybe he didn’t last night. Maybe he was casting plugs or something. Maybe he was drift-fishing, so the engine was turned off, and he was leaning over or casting or something, you know, off balance, and a swell caught him and just flipped him out. He wouldn’t’ve had a chance to use the radio if it happened like that.”

  “No tackle box, either,” I said.

  “It could’ve gone over, too. It was pretty choppy out there last night.” She shook her head. “But, you know—”

  At that moment, someone yelled, “Hey, Morrison! What in hell’re you doing?”

  The girl’s cheeks reddened as she turned to face a man of about my age stalking rapidly toward us. He wore creased chino pants and a white polo shirt. When he got closer, I saw the Coast Guard insignia stitched on the shirt pocket.

  “We were examining the craft, sir,” she said.

  “She was telling me I had to move away from it,” I said.

  He looked from Morrison to me, then back to her. Curly black hair matted his head and forearms and crawled out of his shirt at the throat. His shoulders and chest bulged. “Okay,” he said after a moment. “Good work, Ensign. Dismissed.”

  “Yes, sir,” she said, snapping him a quick salute. She started to leave, then turned to me. “I hope it works out okay with your friend,” she said.

  “Thank you. And you take care of your knees.”

  She grinned quickly, then headed back to the volleyball court.

  “The police want us to keep people away from this boat,” the man said to me.

  “I didn’t know,” I said. “But that’s what Ensign Morrison was telling me. She spoke very sternly to me.”

  He nodded. “I bet she did.”

  “This is Paul Cizek’s boat,” I said. “I’m his lawyer. He launched it from the municipal ramp last night sometime. It looks as if something happened to him.”

  “Looks that way,” he said. “But I can’t help you.”

  “I was wondering,” I said. “Was there any bait in the bait box when you brought her in?”

  He frowned. “Bait?”

  “You know. Eels, menhaden, squid.”

  “I know what bait is,” he said. “All I can tell you is that nobody’s touched anything on that boat.”

  “I just thought if the bait box had bait in it…”

  “Yeah,” he said. “It’d stink up the place. But nobody cleaned it up, if that’s what you were getting at. This is how she was when we found her. Look. I probably shouldn’t have even told you that. It’s a local police matter. You want to talk to anybody, talk to them.”

  I nodded. “Good advice. Thanks.”

  “I’ll walk you out,” he said, and I figured if I balked he’d carry me out.

  “I think I can find my way,” I said. “Thanks anyway.”

  When I got to the end of the driveway, I glanced back. He was standing there with his arms folded over his chest, watching me. I waved. He lifted one hand quickly, then turned away. I crossed the street and climbed into my car.

  11

  I WENT TO THE Grog, my favorite Newburyport hangout, and found an empty stool at the end of the bar. I ordered a draft beer and a cheeseburger, then sat there with my chin on my fist trying to imagine what might’ve happened to Paul.

  I thought the obvious thoughts: A sudden gust of wind or a swell hitting the boat from the wrong angle had knocked him off balance and tumbled him overboard; he had gone voluntarily into the sea, a suicide; or, some enemy had managed to kill him and throw him to the ocean’s scavengers.

  I also considered the possibility that Paul had set it up, faking his death. Except the only people I’d ever heard of doing that were fugitives or life-insurance scammers, and Paul was neither of those. Anyway, he loved his boat too much to set it adrift in a storm.

  The police evidently were leaning to the accident scenario, and for good reason. There are many more accidents at sea than suicides or murders or sham disappearances. The commonest things most commonly happen, they believe, and in the absence of evidence to the contrary, that is the theory they generally pursue.

  I believe that, too. Except the absence of bait on Olivia made me doubt that Paul had ventured out to catch a striped bass, and if he hadn’t gone fishing, there was no reason for him to have gone out in that storm at all.

  Suicide? He’d been depressed, profoundly discontent with his work. His marriage was in the process of dissolving. Middle-aged angst. Midlife crisis. I understood the feelings. Most of my friends had them, and I certainly was not immune to them. But neither I nor any of my friends killed ourselves because we were starting to ask questions such as Is this all there is? and What’s it all about, anyway?

  That left murder. Paul Cizek, like most of us, had enemies, perh
aps even people angry enough to want to kill him. I figured Lieutenant Kirschenbaum had probably considered that possibility, even if it wasn’t the commonest thing. I had trouble imagining Paul Cizek being murdered. I had trouble imagining murder, period. It happened on the news. But it didn’t happen to my friends.

  When they found his body, they’d know. And if they never found his body, they never would know.

  I ate my burger and drank my beer, then found the pay phone. Olivia answered in the middle of the first ring.

  “It’s Brady,” I said.

  “Oh, gee,” she said. “Have you heard anything?”

  “No. I—”

  “When the phone rang, I was hoping…”

  “I’m sorry. It’s just me. I’m still here in Newburyport. You’ve had no news, either, then?”

  “No. Nothing.”

  “Are you okay?”

  She laughed quickly. “Okay? Well, no, I’m not okay at all. I’m having a lot of trouble with this, as a matter of fact. I’m sitting here staring at the telephone, trying to make it ring and for it to be Paul, telling me he’s fine. And so far it isn’t working.” She hesitated. “You’re in Newburyport?”

  “Yes. I decided to poke around a little while I was here.”

  “Did you learn anything at all?”

  I told her about my chat with Randolph and my visit to the Coast Guard station.

  “What do you make of it?” she said. “He never went out without bait.”

  “It makes the accident scenario less likely, I guess,” I said. “Otherwise, I don’t know.” I paused. “Olivia, did Paul have a lot of life insurance?”

  “Oh, geez,” she said. Then she laughed quickly. “You’re thinking he—”

  “It’s a thought.”

  “He had a couple of small policies. Just enough to get himself buried, he liked to say. He figured he could take care of me better by investing.”

  “I just wondered,” I said lamely.

  She said nothing. Finally I said, “Are you there, Olivia?”

  “I’m here,” she said. “I was just thinking…”

  “What?”

  “That you’re a nice man to—to care.”

  “Paul is my friend. So are you.”

  “You don’t have to do this, Brady.”

  “It makes me feel better to be doing something.”

  “I wish I could do something.”

  “You guard that telephone. I’m sure you’ll hear something soon.”

  “Are you?”

  “Am I what?”

  “Are you sure?”

  “No, I guess not.” I shifted the phone to my other ear, then said, “Do you know where his house is?”

  “Paul’s?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’ve never been there, but he told me about it. It’s on, um, Meadowridge Road, or Street, or something. On the island. When you cross the bridge, you go left, I remember him saying that, because if you turn right you go into the wildlife sanctuary. It’s overlooking the marsh. He told me about all the ducks he could see from his windows. Why, Brady?”

  “I thought I’d go out and take a look.”

  “You don’t need to do this,” she said softly.

  “I’m right here. It’ll make me feel useful.”

  “Well, that’s nice. Let me know what you find, okay?”

  “You can count on it.”

  So I got into my car and headed back out Water Street, past the Coast Guard station, and along the Merrimack River, and I kept following the river until I crossed the bridge and found myself on Plum Island. I turned left onto the narrow street. It was half covered with wind-blown sand, and it ran between the island’s dunes on the right and the salt marsh bordering the river on the left. It was lined on both sides with closely packed summer cottages of every architectural description except “elegant.” They looked cramped and run-down, the sorts of places that stay in families for generations of progressively accumulating neglect.

  The yards were tiny and sandy, featuring tufts of marsh grass and plastic ride toys and clotheslines flapping with underwear and bathing suits and towels, and every hundred feet or so a little unpaved road bisected the street I was on, and along both sides of each side street were more ramshackle cottages.

  I drove slowly, examining the road signs, and after about half a mile I spotted Meadowridge on the left. I pulled onto the sandy shoulder, turned off the ignition, and climbed out.

  An insistent breeze blew directly down the street I had been traveling, and it tasted salty and peppered my bare arms and face with tiny grains of sand. I crossed quickly and started down Meadowridge. It was a short street—a couple of hundred feet long, at most—and I could see the marsh down at the end. Four cottages were lined up on each side, all of more or less similar design and set back precisely the same distance from the single-lane, packed-sand roadway.

  An ancient yellow Volkswagen beetle was parked in the short driveway of the last cottage on the left. On the rear bumper was a sticker that read, JUST SAY YO.

  I spotted a woman kneeling at a flower bed by the front steps. Her back was to me, so I approached to a distance from which I could speak to her without either startling her or invading her space. I cleared my throat, then said, “Excuse me?”

  She turned her head, still kneeling. She looked like a teenager, although I have trouble judging the ages of young women. She wore dirty cotton gloves, and one hand held a trowel. She pointed the trowel at me and said, “Are you talking to me?”

  “Yes. I’m sorry to bother you. I’m looking for Paul Cizek’s house.”

  She sat back on her haunches and wiped her forehead with the back of her glove. She had blond hair held back with a rubber band, but wisps had gotten loose and she thrust out her lower lip and blew them away from her face. Then she frowned at me. “Who’re you?”

  “I’m a friend of Paul’s.”

  “He’s not home now.”

  “I know.”

  “Then—”

  “Can you just tell me where he lives, Miss?”

  She looked at me for a minute, then shook her head. “Sorry.” She turned back and resumed troweling.

  I took a few steps closer to her. “I know he lives on this street,” I said. “I’m his lawyer.”

  “He’s his own lawyer, far as I know,” she mumbled without turning around.

  “No. I’m his lawyer. We lawyers hire other lawyers to do our personal legal work for us. We say any lawyer who tries to do it himself has a fool for a lawyer. Lots of people say anyone who hires a lawyer has hired a fool.”

  I heard her chuckle, but she kept her back to me and didn’t respond.

  “Paul’s boat was found adrift last night,” I said. “He wasn’t on it.”

  She turned. Her eyes bored into mine. They were green, almost the identical color of Alex’s eyes. “What’d you say?” she said.

  “Paul Cizek seems to be missing. The Coast Guard towed his boat in last night.”

  She stood up and came toward me. She was tall and lanky in her dirt-smeared T-shirt and snug running shorts. “You got some kind of identification, Mister?”

  I fished a card from my wallet and held it out to her. She shucked off her gloves, tucked them into her armpit, took my card, and squinted at it. Then she looked up at me. “I still don’t know what you want,” she said.

  I shrugged. “I don’t honestly know myself. I’ve talked to the police, I’ve talked to the Coast Guard, and I’ve even talked to the guy at the boat launch. I’m just trying to figure out what happened to Paul. I thought I’d take a look at where he lived. I don’t know what I expect to find, but—”

  “He lives here.”

  “Here?”

  “This is his place. I’m planting some flowers for him. It’s kind of a surprise.”

  “Why?”

  “He’s—we’re friends. I thought some petunias might cheer him up.”

  “Have you seen him today?”

  “No. Listen
. He’s not missing.”

  “He’s not?”

  She smiled quickly. “Not Paul. There’s a mistake. It’s gotta be somebody else’s boat they found. He’d never—”

  “It’s his boat,” I said. “I saw it.”

  She stared at me. Then I saw the tears well up in her eyes. “Aw, shit,” she said. “That bastard.”

  “Who?”

  “Paul. That asshole. He did it, didn’t he?”

  “Did what?”

  “He fucking killed himself.” She made a fist and punched her thigh. “Son of a bitch!”

  I reached out and touched her arm. “Can we talk?”

  She narrowed her eyes. Tears streaked the dirt on her face. After a minute, she nodded. “Sure. We can talk. Come on.”

  I followed her onto the narrow deck that stretched across the back of the house. She lifted a flowerpot, removed a key, unlocked the door, then replaced the key. “Why don’t you have a seat,” she said, gesturing at a pair of wooden deck chairs. “I’ll get us some iced tea. Okay?”

  “That’d be fine,” I said.

  I sat in one of the chairs and lit a cigarette. Beyond a rim of low sand dunes lay a broad expanse of tall marsh grass. The tide was high, and little channels and creeks flowed through the marsh to the Merrimack half a mile away. A pair of black ducks skidded into a pothole in the grass, and seagulls wheeled in the breeze.

  It struck me as a good place to sit and look and think, like my balcony over the harbor. I wondered how much time Paul had spent out here, sitting and looking and thinking.

  The young woman came out a couple of minutes later carrying a pair of plastic glasses. “I’m Maddy Wilkins, by the way,” she said. She handed me a glass. “I live a couple of streets down.”

  “Oh. I wondered…”

  “If I was living with him?”

  I nodded.

  “I’m not, no. Not yet, anyway.” She gestured at the glass I was holding. “Sun tea,” she said. “I made it.”

  I took a sip. It tasted bitter.

  “So you and Paul are—”

  “Are what?”

  I shrugged. “Lovers?”

  She smiled. “That’s a funny, old-fashioned word, isn’t it?”

  “Whatever.”