“How’d you like some company?”
“What are you proposing, Meredith?”
“It’s just that Adelia is thinking of staying.”
“And what would she want with an old man’s company?”
“Child care. She’s got to work, and if she works, she’s got to have someone reliable to take care of Sara. You’re the most reliable person I can think of.”
“A two-year-old?” He quailed momentarily, remembering Merry at that age. Legs that ran as fast as a sandpiper’s, and always in the most dangerous direction. A constant stream of semi-intelligible language, punctuated by questions that rarely had adequate answers. The occasional storm of temper that ended in tears and a sudden fall into sleep. The smallness of a soft hand encased in his (to a child) enormous one, and all the sweetness of discovering the world anew, shining and wondrous as it hadn’t been in years. Would he be reduced to ferrying her around on his bicycle, as he had seen so many tourist grandpas do, small f ists beating on the broad back, the demands relentless for “a story, Grandpa, a story”?
“It would only be temporary,” Merry said, “until Del got her feet under her and could f ind a good alternative.”
Ralph looked at his granddaughter. “Temporary,” he repeated, knowing how false that word usually turned out to be.
“I swear.”
Of course he said yes.
“I’m starving.” Merry automatically stepped around Tabitha the cat and a cluster of recyclable containers piled willy-nilly on the f loor. Tidiness was not the Folgers’ strong point. “I feel like I haven’t eaten in ten years.”
“Me, too,” Adelia said. “Ralph, if I could have had anything tonight, it would have been Sylvie’s spaghetti.”
Ralph beamed. “I thought you might. Comfort food. Your dad loved Sylvie’s sauce himself, so we’ll pretend for a few moments we’re all together under one roof, as we were in the old days.”
Merry felt her throat constrict as she reached for the grated cheese. Her mother had died about eight years before, Adelia’s when she was six. With John Folger running the police force and Joe Duarte out on the water for days at a time, home life was a sporadic thing. Ralph Waldo, however, had tried to f ill the gap. He was never too occupied to help them grow up. Although they were both over thirty now, he was still the greatest comfort, with or without his Bolognese. But for the life of her, Merry had no idea how to tell him that.
Adelia squeezed his gnarled hand. “Can I have the cheese, Ralph?”
This would have to do for the moment.
“You two get caught up?” her grandfather asked.
They looked at each other. Sara clattered her spoon against the table with determined purpose, and Adelia reached over to cut the spaghetti into baby-sized bits.
“Del thinks there’s something wrong with her father’s death,” Merry said quietly.
“Beyond the obvious fact that sixty-eight is too young, you mean?”
She nodded.
“Adelia, my dear,” Ralph Waldo began, and then stopped. No point in telling a Portuguese Nantucketer that the sea was a f ickle mistress; and none in reminding her that men as good as Joe Duarte were lost up and down the coast every year. If her mourning took a turn toward denial, so be it. “What exactly do you mean by wrong?”
“I can’t get it out of my head,” she said. “Ever since the word came that he was gone, I knew something wasn’t right. They said Pop was hit by one of the otter doors and knocked overboard. That with the size of the swell and the weight of his clothes, he sank like a stone. That Jackie, who jumped in after him when he saw him fall, was almost drowned himself trying to f ind him. But none of it makes sense. Joe Duarte was too good a f isherman to—”
“Have an accident?”
“—to mess with his crew’s job. And he was a damn sight too smart to have a net down in rising weather. He’d have smelled it coming, seen it in the set of the waves, and been on his way home before it hit.”
“People make mistakes, Del.”
“Not this stupid, Ralph. Believe you me,” she said, drumming a red-lacquered f ingernail on the tabletop. “My Pop was killed.”
Ralph Waldo grunted and glanced at Merry.
“Maybe Joe Duarte was hit over the head and thrown in the water,” Del persisted, “but not by the net doors and not by the swell. He was murdered.”
“How many folks crewed for your dad, Adelia?” Ralph asked.
“Four. The Lisboa Girl is a sixty-f ive-footer.”
“Had they been with him long?”
“Nope. Since most guys nowadays want to f ish from the mainland, Pop was having trouble keeping a crew together for longer than a season. I don’t know any of them, except Jackie, and he’s only been f irst mate for a year.”
“That’s right,” Merry said. “He’d moved off-island.”
“Until he sank the boat he was skippering over on the Cape’s backside,” Del said. “At least, that’s what I heard from my cousins. I was in New Bed at the time.”
“He sank a boat, and your dad took him on as f irst mate?”
“Like I said, with only two boats trawling out of Nantucket, it’s tough to f ind anybody to crew. Particularly anyone with experience. Besides, Pop and Jackie’s dad, Sylvester, were cronies from way back. Ever since Sylvester died of a heart attack, Pop’s tried to look out for Jackie.”
“My dear,” Ralph said gently, “for what you’re saying to be true, the entire crew would have to be lying. And to keep their stories straight, under such pressure, is quite beyond the power of most of the chuckleheads running trawlers for a living. And as I recollect from the newspaper account, the crew was interviewed by the Coast Guard, and the stories agreed.”
Adelia looked away. “It sounds crazy, right?”
“I’m not saying that makes it any less likely, understand.” He waved his spaghetti fork for emphasis. “Quite the contrary. But even if we accept, for the moment, that your father was helped into the water, where’s the why of it? Why would an entire crew want to murder their captain?”
“Maybe they were paid to do it,” Adelia suggested.
“Because . . . ?”
“Pop left Jackie the Lisboa Girl and the Praia free and clear in his will.”
Frowning, Ralph set down his fork.
“Both boats. Or so Jackie says. I’m calling the lawyer to make sure.”
“And you didn’t see this coming?” Ralph asked carefully. “You two had been . . . estranged . . . for a while.”
“If I thought about it, I’d expect him to leave ’em to my cousins Manny or Luis. They’re blood, and they coulda used the break. They’re running other people’s boats because they can’t afford the mortgages and the insurance.”
“You see what this means, Ralph,” Merry said. “Jackie’s come into a fortune, and a way to restore his reputation as a skipper.”
“If Jackie wanted a boat,” Del interjected, “Pop signed his death warrant.”
Ralph held up his hand. “Did he know that he stood to inherit?”
“He told me he’d witnessed the will.”
Ralph Waldo heard the pain in her voice. Jackie had been Joe’s conf idant at a crucial moment—when he hadn’t given his daughter a thought.
“Think of it,” Del pressed. “Guys are lost overboard every year. Especially in storms. All he had to do was take his chance.”
Neither Ralph nor Merry answered, and silence fell around the table, punctuated by the lilting waver of Sara Duarte singing as she f ingered her pasta. Her spoon was abandoned to one side of her plastic mat, and her hands were covered with dark red sauce. Impatiently, Adelia seized a paper napkin and wiped her child’s hands clean, moving on to the smeared cheeks, despite Sara’s protests.
“I had a gut feeling things were screwy as soon as they told me Pop
was dead,” she said. “But when I heard what Jackie had to say—and the way he said it, tough as nails and like he’d just been caught peeing in the bushes—I just knew Pop was murdered.” She threw down the napkin and looked at them both, her eyes sharp and stubborn. “So you guys think I’m crazy. I’m not gonna let it slide. Pop deserves better. And I’m the only one who cares about him, now.”
Later, when the dishes were washed and Ralph Waldo was putting the last scouring on the stainless-steel sink, Merry saw Adelia and her baby out the door. Then she joined him in the kitchen with a towel.
“Leave them to drain,” he said.
Obediently, she draped the towel over a hook. “What do you think?”
“I think, Meredith Abiah, that your friend is succumbing to the culture of her forebears.”
“Which one is that?”
“In my day, the Portuguese f ishing community was always rife with rumor and innuendo. If they weren’t talking about good and bad luck—who was carrying it and who was spreading it—they were drumming up the latest conspiracy theory about price-f ixing in the Boston f ish markets. The Portuguese take nothing at face value that they can embroider and embellish. Joe Duarte was getting on in years, he made a mistake, or a series of mistakes, and he paid a heavy price. But it doesn’t surprise me that his daughter prefers a conspiracy theory.”
Merry hoisted herself onto the Formica counter, legs dangling. “That business about Jackie inheriting the boats has nothing to do with Portuguese culture. Del’s right. Joe should have left them to Manny or Luis. It might be worth looking into Jackie’s stories.”
“You mean about the boat he sank last year, as well as the boats he stands to inherit?”
Her eyes gleamed. “Exactly. Here’s a guy who’s involved in two boat accidents within months. Even Del can be forgiven for thinking he’s bad luck. Or that there’s more here than meets the eye. I’m getting pretty interested in his seamanship myself.”
“You can’t think Joe was murdered, Meredith Abiah.”
“No,” she admitted. “Much as I’d like to support Del, I can’t say that I do. But she may keep accusing Jackie until I can prove he had nothing to do it.”
“Even proof may not stop the rumors,” Ralph Waldo said. “The Duartes are pretty good at carrying a grudge.”
“It can’t hurt to help an old friend, Ralph.”
The sound of rain suddenly swept into the kitchen; Merry’s father stood in the open doorway, wrenching off his sodden shoes.
“In my experience,” John Folger said, “those words are usually a shortcut to disaster. Which old friend are we helping now?”
“Del Duarte,” Merry said. “She wants us to f ind Joe’s murderer.”
Chapter 4
Merry turned into the Coast Guard compound at Brant Point, its square buildings looming as purely white as a Greek f ishing village in the glare off the harbor. The previous day’s storm had given way to a brilliant May morning of sun and high cumulus, with a fresh breeze that sent the sailboats’ riggings clanging metallically against their masts. It was the sort of spring day that came all too rarely on an island affectionately called the Gray Lady for its persistent fogs.
Everywhere about the compound lay desks and cot frames torn out of their rooms, grayed mattresses piled high, chairs overturned on their sides; spring cleaning for the Coast Guard, Merry guessed. She turned away from the postcard perfection of the boat basin and ran up the steps of the main building, lifting her sunglasses to the top of her head as she pulled open the heavy door.
The interior of the station was dim and cool, blinding her for a moment as she stood in the doorway, blinking and searching for a point of focus.
“Detective Folger.”
Terry Samson’s high-pitched, cracking voice was one no man deserved, certainly not the compact f ighting weight that was Terry. He was standing by the refrigerator in the midst of the station’s eating area, holding a pitcher of lemonade, looking for all the world like Tom Cruise in Top Gun. The sunglasses worn inside were a bit much.
“What can I do for you?” The words fell somewhere between a screech and a whine.
Merry winced involuntarily and turned it quickly into a smile. “Terry. I f igured you’d be out on patrol.”
“Not this shift. I’m on tomorrow—always seem to draw more Saturday nights than anyone else, and I’m beginning to think the system’s rigged. Do me a favor and investigate.”
“I’m actually here on a case, if you’ve got the time to help me,” Merry said.
“Anything I can do, Merry, you know that. This concern the boat-borne heroin ring Woods Hole keeps yammering about?”
Heroin ring. First word she’d heard. That might be something to offer her father, since he’d told her in no uncertain terms to leave the Duarte mess alone. In John Folger’s opinion, the state police should handle Joe’s death if it was suspect—and the DA in Barnstable wouldn’t like the Nantucket force jumping turf. Merry had enough on her plate anyway, he said. Even now, she was supposed to be calling on an elderly woman in Dionis who claimed to have had her geraniums stolen from their pots.
Some plate.
“You keep a record of boating accidents, right?” she asked Terry.
“Sure. It’s all in the MISLE.”
“Missile?”
He took a swig of lemonade straight from the jug, let out a deep sigh, and closed the refrigerator door. “Marine Information for Safety and Law Enforcement database. It tracks over 650,000 vessels in American waters.”
“That’s a lot.” She was momentarily daunted; she knew nothing about the boat Jackie Alcantrara had sunk in Cape Cod Bay. “Do you need to know the registration data for the ship, or could we search for incidents that occurred nearby? Say, in the last year?”
“Sure. Nantucket’s part of Sector Southeastern New England, which covers everything from Manomet Point, Massachusetts, to Watch Hill Point, Rhode Island. What do you consider nearby?”
“The Cape. Off Wellf leet, I think.”
“Commercial or pleasure boat?”
“Fishing trawler, actually.”
“That helps. Commercial captains have to be licensed, so if you’ve got the captain’s name . . .”
“Jackie Alcantrara.”
Terry looked at her quizzically. “He was a f irst mate, last I heard. And Joe Duarte’s boat didn’t sink.”
“Right. This wasn’t the Lisboa Girl, but a boat he captained last year.”
“Got a date?’
She shook her head.
“You looking for insurance fraud?”
“Not particularly. I just want the details of what happened.”
“Okay.” Terry led her out of the kitchen area and into the duty station where his laptop sat on a desk. He took off his sunglasses and logged into the MISLE while Merry pulled up a second chair.
Not surprisingly, the bulk of the commercial f ishing accidents occurred during the rough weather of late winter and early spring, when the Atlantic was f iercely cold, the swell was dramatic, and the water was the color of a submarine’s steel hull. These were the months when the New England f ishing community eked out a living, waiting for the return of the summer schools, competing with the Canadians, Spaniards, Japanese and Russians for whatever bottom f ish remained in international waters. Tough as the work was, nobody could afford to stay home.
Terry punched in Jackie’s name and turned up two accident reports within seconds. One was the Lisboa Girl. The Coast Guard choppers had been dispatched to the Georges Bank in an effort to retrieve Joe Duarte’s body, and they’d continued to look for it for two days after the storm that killed him. Jackie’s name was on record as an incident witness.
The second report dated from last April. Merry scrolled through the f ile.
Jackie had sunk a trawler named Seaman’s Folly just off
Wellf leet Harbor during a sudden squall on April 16. While attempting to race for port, he’d struck an unmarked wreck in seven fathoms of water and the boat had foundered rapidly. The f ive-man crew was saved, owing to a timely SOS. The boat’s owner—a corporation called SeaCon—lost its investment and Jackie lost his job.
Merry looked up from the monitor, def lated. What had she expected? A red f lag hidden in eff icient Coast Guard prose? The hint that a criminal act had gone undetected?
A pattern. That’s what she’d hoped to see: something that linked the accidents. But the only commonality was bad weather—and that was business as usual in commercial f ishing.
Mortgaged boats carried insurance by law, and as with any accident, the proof of the policy and its underwriter were recorded in the Coast Guard report. The SeaCon Corporation’s underwriter was a company called Water Rights. Insurance fraud, Terry had suggested. Maybe she should check on the outcome of SeaCon’s claim.
“Want a copy of the report?” he asked.
“Email it to me. And Terry—please forget Jackie’s name.”
He f lashed her his Top Gun smile. “I’d like to. Guy’s an asshole.”
“As a friend or a f isherman?”
“Both. Violent when he drinks. If you’re going after him, Merry, watch your back.”
“Needs more balsamic vinegar.” Tess Starbuck passed Peter Mason the spoon with an air of conviction.
He sipped the liquid tentatively and screwed up his face. “Needs sugar, surely?”
Tess sighed and handed him a piece of lettuce. “You’re not in the habit of drinking salad dressing straight from the bottle, are you? Try it with something grassy-f lavored, and imagine warm duck breast slivered on top. An autumnal taste is what we’re going for here.”
Rafe leaned in the doorway, arms crossed, and decided not to involve himself in the debate. Too many cooks, and so forth, and besides, his allegiance was murky: his bride-to-be or his boss of six years. The two of them had been experimenting with the cranberry-based dressing for much of the afternoon. It was one of a series of concoctions intended for bottling under a new Mason Farms label. Tess had persuaded Peter to play the role of partner, promising to showcase his produce, cranberries, and spring lamb in ways certain to wow locavore food critics. They were to test the line at the Greengage this summer, and eventually launch it upon an unsuspecting world.
Death in Rough Water Page 4
