Death in Rough Water

by Francine Mathews

  “Yes.”

  Ralph Waldo turned the leaves under the water. Tiny black grit f lowed out, a dead bug or two. He shook the heads lightly and searched in a cupboard for the salad spinner. “You sure that’s a good idea?”

  “I didn’t get far enough to do any damage,” she said. “I was told that when the parents of a child aren’t married, access to the birth certif icate is restricted.”

  “They wouldn’t send you a copy.”

  “No. I’d have to get a court order to see Sara’s records. From a Boston court.”

  “Even though you’re a police off icer, and this is a murder investiga­tion?”

  “Even though.”

  He dropped the lettuce in the salad spinner. It was an old-fashioned one, with a pull cord that turned the inner basket instead of a handle. “Sara loves to pull this, you know,” he said. “She laughs and laughs.”

  “We can’t keep her, Ralph.”

  “There was never any question of that.”

  “But she’s going to be tugged in several different directions, whether she’s aware of it or not. Jackie Alcantrara’s going to try for her, according to Felix Harper, and with the provision in Joe’s will, he’s got a f ighting chance. The Duartes won’t let her go that easily. And then there’s Dave Grizutto.”

  “Who’s he?”

  “Bartender at the Brotherhood. He thinks he’s Sara’s father.”

  “Is he?”

  “I doubt it.”

  “And you think f inding the real father would help,” Ralph Waldo said slowly.

  “It might save a two-year-old a lot of mess. You know what’ll happen. She’s living here on borrowed time. She’ll be declared a ward of the state, and put in foster care while the hearings and the trial dates are set, and Dave Grizutto’s DNA is tested for paternity purposes. Then she’ll be taken from her foster parents and awarded to somebody—the Alcantraras, quite possibly. Connie Alcantrara doesn’t have a motherly bone in her body, but she sure knows how to spend money. It’ll be a nightmare.”

  “Even if you f ind Sara’s father, she could still face a trial,” Ralph Waldo said. “He might not want her. Or his custody could be contested. He hasn’t exactly been active in Sara’s life.”

  “True. I still think it’s worth a chance.”

  “Do you?” Ralph Waldo’s voice tightened with anger. When he turned to face her, she saw how offended he was. “Is it Sara you’re think­ing of, Meredith Abiah, or are you just itching to know?”

  “Hardly that.” She studied him an instant. “I’m surprised you’re so opposed.”

  “Those records are restricted for a reason,” Ralph Waldo said. “Del didn’t tell anybody when she was alive, and I’m not sure she’d want it known once she was dead.”

  “She certainly wouldn’t want Sara turned over to Jackie Alcantrara,” Merry said.

  “Then she should have named a guardian.”

  “But she didn’t.” He was being very stubborn; but Merry knew what was right. “I’m going to request the court order, Ralph.”

  “Fine,” he said, his bearded chin jutting out. “Just don’t blame me once Pandora’s box is open.”

  But it was Jenny Baldwin who really took the lid off, the following morning—though it was not the box Ralph had in mind.

  Chapter 22

  It was Merry who ran into Jenny Baldwin at the Downyf lake.

  Coffee and fresh baked goods seemed particularly necessary this Wednesday morning—Del’s autopsy report had come in late the previous afternoon. Overcome by longing for a raspberry bram­ble, Merry rose an hour early and drove out to the Rotary.

  She took a long draft of coffee, gazing through the window at the f ire station across the street. It was a gray morning, with yesterday’s threat of rain realized. Along the South Shore beaches, fog had rolled in off the Atlantic; by nightfall it would blanket the town, racing like a hasty ghost under the occasional streetlight. The perfect night to stop by Del’s, for a warm dinner and some good conversation; the sort of visit Merry had intended to make, and put off because of the Town Pier f ire.

  The state crime lab’s report said that Del had suffered a punctured lung, a broken rib, and a ruptured chamber of the heart. Her death had taken perhaps a moment from harpoon thrust to completion. Analysis of her stomach contents showed primarily half-digested pizza and some alcohol—but it was determined to be red wine, not scotch, despite the two carefully washed highball glasses on her kitchen counter. Del had probably put her wineglass away herself. She rarely left dishes out to dry.

  Pizza and red wine, Merry thought. The mundanity of f inal moments never recognized as f inal. Del had cleaned all day, felt exhausted, ordered pizza for Sara and herself, and washed it down with table wine she probably kept corked on top of the refrigerator. Had she known it was her last meal, what would she have eaten? A beloved dish from childhood? Some­thing fattening? Nothing at all?

  Merry sighed and bit into the bramble. It was an airy, smooth pastry in the shape of a hockey puck, f illed with raspberries and what she thought was walnuts. She needed a second one to be sure.

  “Detective Folger! Now if that isn’t a coincidence!”

  She looked up and saw Jenny Baldwin’s bleached blue eyes staring at her intently. The developer’s wife was wearing neat and emotionless separates of the kind seen everywhere among a certain class of people in New England—f lowered skirt in pink and blue, deep pink polo shirt with the collar buttoned clear to the neck; tennis shoes, which she would call “tennies,” or “Keds”; and a deep blue hairband drawn severely back from her forehead. A lightship basket dangled from one arm, its choc­olate patina and modest ivory decoration suggesting respectable age and provenance.

  “I was planning to stop by the station and talk to you right after I got these doughnuts home for the boys,” Jenny said. “Do you have a moment?”

  “Sure. Sit down.”

  Jenny transferred the purse from her right arm to her left, tucked one hand behind her skirt, and slid into the banquette opposite Merry.

  “Want some coffee?”

  “Had some. What’s that you’re eating?”

  “A bramble.” Merry didn’t offer her any. She could get her own. “What can I do for you, Jenny?”

  “Well, it’s probably nothing, and I really should talk to someone less senior than yourself, I’m sure—”

  Flattering me already, Merry thought. Must be really thankless.

  “—but you’re the only person I know down there, and I’d so much rather talk to a woman.”

  “I understand.”

  “I just feel so violated.”

  Dear God, don’t tell me she was raped. Merry sat up and put the bramble back on its plate. “Did something happen, Jenny?”

  “My upper left-hand drawer,” she said.

  “Your drawer.”

  “It’s been pilfered.”

  “Really?”

  “Well, it must have been. I mean, I always keep a little store of money tucked into my jewelry box, just for emergencies, and when I happened to put some earrings back yesterday afternoon, I noticed the money was gone.”

  “How much are we talking about, here?”

  “A f ifty-dollar bill.”

  “And you last saw it when?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. Maybe a week ago. I haven’t actually used the money for ages. I just keep it there.”

  “You don’t think Tom could have taken it? Intending to replace it, I mean,” Merry added quickly, not wanting to offend. “Maybe he was short of cash, and didn’t have time to stop at an ATM.”

  “Well, I thought so too. And so I asked him, last night. He actually laughed at me. ‘You think I’m that desperate for money?’ he said, and that was the end of it.”

  “And—your nephew?”

  “Joshua didn
’t know it was there. How could he?”

  Merry relaxed against the seat. Every petty thief knew to check the upper left-hand drawer of a woman’s bureau for valuables. Over the past ten years on the island, more upper left-hand drawers had been robbed of cash and jewelry than she could count. Tourists wrapped their treas­ures in bathroom towels and hid them behind the headboards in their hotel rooms. The crooks knew that, too. But if the loss of f ifty dollars felt like violation, Jenny had led a charmed life.

  “Did you notice whether anything else was missing?”

  “Well, that’s it. This morning I decided to do a thorough search of the drawer. After all, I keep some jewelry in there. And the bracelet is gone.”

  “What sort of bracelet?”

  “My copper one. It’s not very valuable, which makes it so strange. They left my pearls, and an emerald pendant, and some rather good pieces of onyx. And they took the worthless copper.”

  Merry’s attention was suddenly riveted. “Could you describe it for me?”

  “It was very simple, really. Just copper links with a bar in the middle that had my name on it. Tom gave it to me for back trouble. They say that copper worn around the wrist can cure you of pain.”

  “Did it?”

  “Not at all. It just turned my wrist black. So I stopped wearing it. I’d almost forgotten about it until this morning.”

  “You know, Jenny, I’m glad you stopped to talk,” Merry said, gath­ering up her purse. “But I think we’ll have to go to the station anyway. We found part of a copper bracelet the other day, and I’d like to see whether you think it’s yours.”

  Merry sent Jenny Baldwin home with her doughnuts and instructions to appear at the police station as soon as she could. Then she drove over to Fairgrounds Road and relayed the news to Matt Bailey.

  “We’d better print her,” he said grimly.

  “Oh, come on, Matt,” Merry said. “You really think Jenny Baldwin would innocently report the theft of a bracelet she knew she’d worn to kill Del Duarte? That makes a lot of sense. About as much as her motive for Del’s murder. She has none.”

  “It makes more sense than a burglar stealing it, and then leaving it by Del’s body.”

  To that, Merry had no answer.

  Jenny duly arrived, and was shown the tiny plastic evidence bag Clarence produced, with its pitifully few links of chain.

  “Well, I don’t know,” she said doubtfully. “You didn’t f ind the bar with my name?”

  Be glad we didn’t, Merry thought, or Bailey would have drawn your blood days ago.

  “Thaht’s all we have, I’m afraid,” Clarence said. “Makes it hahd to say, doesn’t it?”

  “It certainly does. Where did you f ind it?”

  Clarence looked at Merry, and Merry at Matt Bailey. The latter’s expression was portentous. “On the living-room f loor of Adelia Duarte’s house,” he said. “Do you have any idea how part of your bracelet was present at the scene of a murder, Mrs. Baldwin?”

  “A murder? My bracelet? But I didn’t say it was my bracelet,” she squeaked, in what Merry judged was genuine bewilderment. “I can’t know that from these few links. I just came down to talk about a burglary.”

  “I’m afraid I’m going to have to f ingerprint you, Mrs. Baldwin,” Bailey said.

  Merry groaned.

  “And I’d like permission to take a few samples of your clothing from your closet.”

  “You can’t do this,” the woman gasped. Her f ingers clenched and unclenched convulsively on the handle of her lightship basket.

  “Jenny,” Merry said, “is there any chance you wore the bracelet to Joe Duarte’s funeral reception? Perhaps you lost it then.”

  “Maybe I did,” Jenny said, grasping at straws. “I’m sure I did.”

  “Could you come with me, Mrs. Baldwin?”

  “You can’t take my prints unless you arrest me,” she said. “I want to speak to a lawyer. Merry—”

  “You’re right,” Merry said. “He can’t. But there’s no reason to be afraid of prints, Jenny. You’ve got nothing to hide, right? So the prints don’t mean anything. It might be better to do as he says.”

  The woman’s eyes were wide and frightened, and ten years seemed to have dropped into the lines of her face. Little as she liked Jenny Baldwin, Merry felt moved by pity. If the woman objected and got a lawyer, Bailey would simply write up a request for a search warrant an hour later, and be at her house by the following day. It would be a simple matter then to f ind prints everywhere.

  Jenny took a deep breath. “Of course I’ve nothing to hide,” she said, avoiding Merry’s eyes. “I’ll do as you say. But believe me, Tom will have quite a conversation with your father. This is the f irst time we’ve asked you people for anything. A simple burglary. I understand now what Josh meant about police persecution.”

  “It doesn’t help to threaten the police, Mrs. Baldwin,” Matt Bailey said stonily. “Come with me, please.”

  Clarence watched her go thoughtfully. “She cahn’t have lost the bracelet at Joe Duarte’s reception, Marradith, though it was nice o’ you to suggest it. Thaht house was clean’s a whistle. Del had vacuumed. If she hadn’t, we’d have found more f ibahs and whatnot from that crowd a’ people than we’da known what to make of. Those links were dropped ahftah Del cleaned.”

  “That doesn’t make them Jenny Baldwin’s,” Merry said stubbornly.

  Clarence grunted. “Guess I’ll be wanted directly.” He braced himself against the arms of his chair and thrust himself upright. “Not that young Bailey is so enahmahed of my opinion. He’ll be wantin’ to send those prints to Bahston next.”

  But the state crime lab’s expertise was unnecessary, as it turned out. Jenny Baldwin’s thumb and foref inger clearly matched the prints on the bottle of Glenf iddich. It was merely a matter of time, Bailey said conf i­dently, before they found the right f ibers.

  Merry wasn’t so sure. She looked at the sensible cotton clothes Jenny was wearing, and had always worn. Beige linen and silk? It didn’t seem likely.

  Bailey went ahead and arrested Jenny, despite Merry’s protests. He didn’t have enough of a case, she said; there was too much unexplained. But Bailey felt that Jenny Baldwin was spooked and scared and acting guilty. She had tried to avoid having her prints taken, threatened the police with retribution, and virtually taunted him to arrest her. And if he sent her home now, with her money she’d be out of the country in a matter of hours.

  Tom Baldwin arrived, breathing f ire and demanding to see John Fol­ger. Felix Harper arrived, blinking as though from too much exposure to sunlight, and sat by Jenny while her statement was taken. Bailey took away her lightship basket and locked her in a cell reserved for women, where she huddled like a skittish dog on one corner of the steel bench, staring at the commode and the opposite wall.

  “This is ridiculous,” Merry said angrily to her father. She was in his off ice with the door closed, knowing full well she was violating collegial protocol. Bailey was running the investigation; Bailey thought he’d found a murderer. If he was wrong, let him hang himself. Only she couldn’t quite leave Jenny Baldwin in the role of gibbet.

  “Ask him why Jenny Baldwin killed Del. He doesn’t know. Neither does Jenny. Because she didn’t, Dad.”

  John Folger looked at her from under his heavy eyebrows—Folger eyebrows, her eyebrows—and sighed. He wanted the whole thing to go away. “How’d her prints get in the house?”

  “Her story is that she brought the bottle to the funeral reception as a gift,” Merry said. “Everybody brought something. She didn’t know the Duartes never drank scotch—that sort of thing happens all the time. Look at all the well-meaning bottles of Campari we’ve got sitting in the pantry at home. The real question is why the Glenf iddich was placed out on the counter, with the murderer’s prints nowhere in evidence, when the autopsy says Del d
idn’t drink it that night. Bailey doesn’t want to think about that. It’s too complicated. He’d rather believe Jenny drank enough for two, washed and wiped the glasses, and helpfully left the bottle there with her prints all over it.”

  “Where was she the night Del died?”

  “Lying down in a darkened room with a compress to her head, ac­cording to her statement,” Merry said. “No witnesses. She was supposed to go to a private party at the yacht club with Tom, and begged off at the last minute because of a migraine, which she says she often gets. Her nephew was out with friends. So she has no alibi. In your experience, isn’t that often the case with the innocent? I’d be more suspicious if she produced three complete strangers all willing to swear she’d sat next to them at the Boston Symphony.”

  “Why are you so sure she didn’t do it, Meredith?”

  “Because I can think of no reason for her to kill Del.” Merry sat back in her chair, arms folded, a challenge in every line of her body. Her father plowed ahead anyway.

  “And it wouldn’t be because this lets out Jackie—who, I must say, has an alibi and left no prints or f ibers at the scene?” he said.

  “You know what I think of alibis.”

  “I also know what you think of Jackie.”

  “I think we’re looking at something a little more complex than Jenny Baldwin virtually handing us evidence that incriminates her.”

  “Meaning?”

  “The murderer deliberately left a bottle on the counter that was f illed with something Del never drank. Why do that? Unless the murderer knew it had Jenny’s prints on it. He left it for the same reason he dropped a part of her bracelet on the rug by Del’s body—not enough to look too obvious, not the part of the chain that had her name, for instance, but just enough to look plausible.”

  “You think she’s being framed,” her father said slowly.

  “Don’t you?”

  “I don’t know, Meredith. Like you, I stumble over motive. Why would Jenny kill Del? I’ve no idea. But why would someone want us to think she did? That’s even harder.”