Death in Rough Water

by Francine Mathews

  “Three years ago.”

  “And Sara is two.”

  “Right. Which means we broke up in June and Del got pregnant somewhere around September. It wasn’t by me, is that what you’re say­ing?”

  “I don’t have to.”

  He stood up, turning in the small space like a caged animal. “It may still have been me,” he said. “I wasn’t done with Del. I’ve never been done with Del. We got together, on and off, I saw her now and then. Do you know what it’s like to ache for someone like that, Merry? To ache physically, until you think you’ll scream or smash a glass in a customer’s face from the pain of not having her? I couldn’t live with that. She had no right to expect me to.”

  A cold f inger moved up Merry’s back as comprehension dawned. “Did you rape her, Dave?”

  “It wasn’t rape,” he said swiftly, turning on Merry. He was very tall against the off ice’s single swinging bulb, and she shrank away from him involuntarily. “It wasn’t rape. I’d never do that to Del.”

  There was a note of defensiveness in his voice Merry could not accept. She wondered, for a moment, if he was prone to violence; if the calm exterior and the easy charm hid a volatile temper. Perhaps this was what Del had seen, and why she wanted to break away. There was no way of knowing, now. But Matt Bailey could look in Dave’s closet for f ibers that matched those on Del’s f loor. He could take a sample of his blood, a piece of his hair, an imprint of his thumb and foref inger.

  “Sara doesn’t look much like you,” she said.

  “She doesn’t look much like Del, either.”

  “So you’ve seen her?”

  Too late, he caught himself. His eyes f licked to Merry’s, then f licked down to the ground. “I’ve seen her,” he whispered. “I had to see her.”

  “Did Del bring her to the bar?”

  He shook his head. “I wasn’t working the day that—that day. I stopped by Del’s house.”

  “The night she was murdered? What time, Dave?”

  He did not meet her gaze. “Around seven,” he said.

  “And how was she?”

  “Same old Del. She turned into this person I could never reach once she knew she was pregnant, Merry,” he said, sitting down opposite her once more. “She’d stand in front of me with her arms crossed and her face distant, and she’d make small talk. Like we’d never been more than passing strangers. She built up an amazing wall. And all I wanted to know was why she thought that was so necessary. But I could never get her to talk about anything real—to be herself with me. She was polite and untouchable and a complete stranger. Sometimes I wanted to shake her until her teeth rattled in her head—” He stopped, and looked down at his hands. “That is not an admission of guilt.”

  “Did you argue, Dave?”

  He shook his head. “We never got that far. I was trying to give her space, keep my distance, reestablish contact. I played with Sara. I f igured with Del back on the island, maybe with time, whatever had gone wrong three years ago could be put right. Maybe she’d see me with Sara and recognize that the kid needed a father. I was trying so hard, Merry, and it was like talking to myself.”

  “There was nothing wrong when you left?”

  “Not a thing.”

  “What time was this?”

  “About eight. An hour was long enough. Besides, Del had been housecleaning all day and she looked pretty beat. She wanted a bath and an early bed.”

  “Did she say anything that suggested she was worried, Dave?”

  “To me? She said nothing even remotely personal to me. You forget, I’m the stranger.” He smiled crookedly. “All I heard about was swordf ishing. And how good your grandfather was with kids. And how tired she was, and shouldn’t I be going? She gave me the politeness and the door.”

  “And a drink,” Merry said. “Let’s not forget the scotch.”

  “Scotch? What scotch?”

  “The Glenf iddich. It was sitting on the kitchen counter when we found her.”

  “Well, it wasn’t when I left.” He snorted. “Del didn’t drink scotch. She rarely drank hard liquor, and when she did, it was Stoli and cranberry juice with a dash of club and a lime.”

  That used to be true, Merry knew, but maybe Del’s tastes had changed in New Bedford. She studied Dave’s cleft chin and warm blue eyes. He was a deceptive guy—nothing about his appearance, his temper, or his life was quite what it seemed. He revealed only a bit of the truth, to himself as well as to her. But now he spoke with absolute authority.

  “You’re sure about that?” she probed.

  “I’m a bartender, Merry. I’ve got half the resident population’s drinking habits memorized, not to mention the preferences of some steady tourists. Del didn’t drink scotch.”

  “I guess the bottle was Joe’s,” Merry said thoughtfully, “or left over from the funeral reception.” Although that still didn’t explain two glasses. Or why the scotch was on the counter.

  “Joe drank Jack Daniel’s,” Dave said, “and he was too cheap to keep much of anything else in the house. When I went to dinner there, I always brought the wine. It was the only safe thing to do.”

  “That your favorite poison?” she asked.

  “I don’t play favorites,” he returned. “Do you?”

  Merry merely smiled and closed her laptop. “I’ve kept you too long,” she said. “Your manager will be screaming.”

  He shrugged. “I don’t really care anymore,” he said. “I kept this job in the hope that Del would come back to Nantucket one day. She did. Only things didn’t turn out the way I’d planned. Maybe it’s time I moved on.”

  “Just don’t do it for a few weeks, okay?” Merry said, attempting to keep her voice light.

  “Because you suspect me of murder?”

  “I don’t suspect you of anything. I’m not on Del’s case.”

  “I doubt that,” Dave said, and opened the off ice door.

  Sleep eluded Merry, as it had for several nights past. Her brain was f illed with a constant command, urgent and unanswerable. I have to f ind Sara’s father. I have to f ind Sara’s father. The best way to avoid all the court battles, the tug-of-war over a child, was to know the truth.

  Jackie would want to see the will enforced, and the Duartes would do everything they could to stop him. Dave Grizutto would insist on his paternity to convince himself that Del had really loved him. Merry doubted that Sara was Dave’s child. It was not like Del to deliberately lie; but to avoid causing him pain, she could easily justify keeping the truth from Dave. Instead, her silence had allowed him to ignore reality, up to the very night of her death.

  —Unless Del f inally told him about Sara’s father, hoping that hard facts might slap him into sense. She might even have shown him the birth certif icate. Had jealousy and rage taken over? Had Dave snatched up the harpoon and plunged it into Del’s chest, f leeing with the f ile marked “Personal Documents”?

  As the town clock tolled midnight, the refrain hardened into con­viction. I have to f ind Sara’s father.

  Chapter 19

  Tom Baldwin started life as an unskilled construction worker, with a day that went from six-thirty to four, and though the afternoon hours at his off ice now stretched until dinnertime, he still left the house while most of the world was asleep. This Tuesday morning in June was no different. The streets of the town were empty of life as his heavy tires wallowed along the cobble paving stones, halting patiently at every stop sign before moving through the empty intersections.

  He imagined the traff ic that would choke the one-way streets for the rest of the summer as vehicles snaked from Steamboat Wharf along South Water, up Main, and out Orange Street to all the island points beyond. Block by block, every car would stop—for the pedestrians, who believed Nantucket was an island for walking, and the bikers, who thought cars should be banned. Life in high season wo
uld be far more eff icient if the selectmen would allow traff ic lights, but commercial lights of all kinds were expressly forbidden by the historic preservation ordinances. Tom grimaced. If he had his way, Nantucket’s future would pay less homage to its past.

  The island was governed in traditional New England fashion, by a board of selectmen who presided over a few elected off icials and the annual town meeting. Tom had crossed swords with the selectmen in the past—over zoning ordinances, sewage and water rights, tax provisions. He proposed enlightened schemes for the management of the island’s property that would have brought in signif icant tax dollars, and he was thwarted as often as he was pleased. He was an outsider—by birth and occupation—and that marginal status cost him. But soon he would enter the holy of holies.

  One of the most signif icant posts in island government was that of f inance director. The f inance director was appointed by the selectmen and served, in essence, as the chief f inancial off icer for Nantucket, town and county. The f inance director supervised everything to do with money—long-range planning, budgeting, all the contracts and procure­ment for government projects—and so f inance director was the job Tom Baldwin wanted. The incumbent had died suddenly, to Tom’s intense sat­isfaction, and the head of the board of selectmen was a personal friend. Over drinks at the Cliffside Beach Club two days ago, Jerry Swain had all but told Tom that the post was his for the taking.

  The developer crossed Broad Street, heading for his off ice on Easton, and took a moment to glance toward the yacht club on his right. The boats hardly bobbed in the slack tide; a gull posed on a piling, arcing its wings and opening its beak in a soundless cry. A redheaded waitress moved among the breakfast tables on the terrace of the White Elephant, the hotel perched on Brant Point, and he felt a sudden pang. The beauty of young, redheaded women, moving with sinuous grace among the ta­bles; like his mother, before too much hard work and childbirth turned her creamy Irish skin to leather. His eyes f licked back to the road and he cleared his throat, shaking off the past.

  There was a car parked next to his reserved space—a Ford Explorer. Not a staffer’s car; he knew them precisely. A client? Too early in the morning. A tourist, perhaps. He’d have to have it towed.

  “Good morning, Tom.”

  “Meredith Folger! You’re up and at ’em.”

  “I’ve a lot to do.” She stood with a hand extended, professional and neat as ever in her straight khaki skirt and silk camp blouse. She managed to endow the simplest clothes with a bone-deep elegance, he thought, like Greta Garbo. It was no accident he’d thought of the reclusive actress in looking at Merry; something about the cheekbones and the hollows of the eyes was the same. She was about f ive foot ten, much taller than his wife, Jenny. But he had never viewed her quite so poetically. Perhaps it was the unexpectedness of her presence, or the breath of memory that had stirred his thoughts earlier.

  “What brings you to my neck of the woods?”

  “I’d like to talk about the Town Pier, if you don’t mind, Tom.”

  “Of course,” he said. “It would be about Josh, wouldn’t it?”

  He showed her into his off ice and shut the door. “My assistant isn’t here yet, but I can make some coffee,” he said.

  “Don’t bother. I’ve had some.” She settled into one of his leather club chairs and pulled a laptop out of her large purse. Half-glasses perched on the end of her nose.

  “What can I say, Merry?” he began. “Josh left an old dory at the Town Pier, but he didn’t wire it up. You’re barking up the wrong tree if you think he’s an arsonist.”

  “I don’t,” she said. “At least, he doesn’t strike me that way. Maybe he’s got a psychological fascination for the blue glow of f lame, but if so, I can’t detect it. He doesn’t seem desperate for attention, or in search of a tool over others, or in need of venting deep-seated hostility through destructive behavior. But then, I’m neither a psychiatrist nor a parent.”

  “Neither am I.”

  “No. You’re just a relative who’s given him board and a job for the summer. How come?”

  “Alice—my sister—was recently divorced by her husband of nearly thirty years. Josh hasn’t taken well to the change in his home life.”

  “I thought he was pretty much at school.”

  “He is. Funny, but a lot of marriages fall apart when the last child leaves for college. That’s what happened to Alice. Jack looked around, saw the kids were gone and his only responsibility to them was f inancial, and he decided to seize on a second youth. Ward off death for a while. He changed jobs, changed towns, changed partners. It’s not uncommon.”

  “No. And Josh?”

  “His grades started slipping. He switched majors, from business to political science. Started protesting anything and everything. Alice thought he needed some focus—a different place, new interests, hard work for decent pay. I f igured it was the least I could do.”

  “And how’s it been?”

  “Fine.”

  “Just f ine?”

  “I’m a little old to become a parent overnight. I’m not very good at it, Merry. I don’t know how to talk to kids—at least, not like a dad. You know. Fatherly. Inspiring. Warm. Reassuring. So I settle for being a ger­iatric older brother, and I’m not too good at that either. I imagine Josh sees through both.”

  “Has he made any local friends?”

  “I don’t really know. Jenny might.”

  “I just wondered. If he’d taken up with someone who knew he had the boat, and saw an opportunity to frame him, it might give us a lead.”

  “You really think this was done by a kid?”

  She shrugged. “I’m not in charge of this investigation, Tom. The state police have it. I’m just helping out.”

  “Which means you’re not at liberty to tell me anything.”

  She smiled by way of an answer. “Do you ever use plastic explosive on your construction sites?”

  He looked his surprise. “On Nantucket?”

  “I understood you had building sites elsewhere.”

  “On the Cape, yes. There’s one or two developments off Route 28.”

  “And outside Boston.”

  “Braintree.”

  “And—in the Berkshires?”

  He shifted behind his desk and raised one foot to the opposite knee, cradling the ankle. “I’ve a site in the planning stages just outside of Lenox.”

  “There’s a lot of rock in the Berkshires.”

  “There is.”

  “If it’s not inconvenient, Tom, we’d like to have the name of the site manager there.”

  “What’s going on, Merry?”

  “I just do what I’m told, Tom.”

  “That’s a damn lousy attitude to take with a friend.”

  “Sometimes police work is unfriendly.”

  He looked at her a moment, assessing. He’d always dismissed her status as a cop, considering it a sinecure provided by her father, equiv­alent to a college kid’s lifeguarding at Daddy’s country club. He realized now that Meredith Folger was in her early thirties; she’d outgrown the college-kid phase when he wasn’t looking, and assumed the family mantle of authority. If she was asking for the manager’s name, he knew her father wanted it, too; and if he stonewalled, he’d only bring the chief of police to his door. He reached over to his keyboard and pulled up his contacts, although he could have recited the man’s name and phone number from memory.

  “Here it is,” he said, copying it onto a slip of paper and straining across the desk. As he did so, a pile of paperwork slid to the f loor at Merry’s feet. She bent to collect it.

  “Looks like a lot of work,” she said.

  “All speculative at the moment.” He thrust the pile back on his desk. “It’s been delightful, Detective, but my day starts early for a reason. For­give me, but I’ll have to cut this short.�
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  “No problem, Tom,” she said, smoothing her hands down the length of her skirt. “Just one more question. Did Del want her old job back?”

  He stopped short and stared at her. “Del?” he said,

  “Del. Duarte. She had lunch with you a few days before her death. I just wondered why.”

  “We were old friends,” he said.

  “I know. That’s something we have in common. You’re handling her murder very well, by the way. I thought you might bring it up. If you’re respecting my grief, I appreciate it, Tom.”

  Was she mocking him? The green eyes were as cool and careful as ever; he couldn’t tell. He felt the skin on his forehead moisten slightly, and a wave of anger washed over him.

  “I handle everything well, Detective Folger,” he spat out. “I lose an expensive boat to f ire, and I shrug it off and talk about in­surance. My nephew’s facing a criminal indictment, and I tell my sister with a straight face that he’s adjusting to life quite well. A young woman I regarded almost as a daughter dies a brutal death, and I’m back at work the next day. Handling things is how I get through life, Detective. How do you do it? By turning the knife in the wounds of everybody you meet?”

  “It was just a thank-you, Tom,” she said quietly, and picked up her purse. “I take it Del didn’t come looking for a job?”

  He shook his head. “She didn’t need anything from me, Meredith. She’d decided to make her own way.”

  After she left, he picked up the phone and dialed Jerry Swain at home. Swain was independently wealthy and spent the summer sailing; he never left the breakfast table before nine o’clock. It was time to tell him that Tom Baldwin was his man. He’d waited a day, to make it con­vincing; but he wasn’t kidding anybody. The f inance director post was everything he’d ever wanted. Strange, to be worth ten million dollars, and still feel that way.

  Merry drove the familiar roads without seeing them, thinking about Tom Baldwin. Her job had been to study his reaction to questioning, and he’d given her plenty of material. The notion of Josh and arson did not ruff le his calm; the request for the name of his Lenox site manager irritated him; but the mention of Del positively blew a fuse. What had happened at that lunch to make Tom Baldwin so defensive? Had Del in fact asked for a job, and had he refused her—and felt guilty in retrospect?