The Perfect Summer (Hubbard's Point)

by Rice, Luanne

  “See? You're still upset,” Tara said. “I knew it.”

  “I guess I am, a little,” Bay said. “But not at you. You were trying to help. Anyway, I'm going to get busy. Maybe I'll try some of the garden centers and see if they're looking for help. Being a gardener was your idea—I have you to thank for that.”

  “Thanks for nothing, after what happened,” Tara said. “I'm going to make it up to you. I swear, I am. With God as my witness . . .”

  “Tara, it's okay,” Bay said. “Stop, okay? I'll see you later.”

  She hung up and looked out the window. There was Tara standing in her kitchen window. They raised hands in a small wave. How often they had reached out to each other like this over the years . . .

  Bay thought of the time their two grannies, both about eighty, had decided to take a trip back to Ireland. They were widows by then, and they hadn't set foot on Irish soil since they'd first come to America. Bay and Tara were sixteen; they had just gotten their driver's licenses. Tara's mother had told her she could drive their grandmothers to the airport limo in New Haven—but when they got there, all it took was one look between the girls to know they were taking them all the way to New York.

  Bay remembered Tara driving to Bridgeport, then switching so Bay could drive the rest of the way. She recalled the thrill and tension of driving into the morass of New York traffic.

  Relying solely on Tara's navigation and map-reading—through the Bronx, over the Whitestone Bridge, onto the truck-and-yellow-taxi-studded Van Wyck Expressway—Bay managed to get them to the Aer Lingus terminal at JFK airport. And Bay and Tara had stood at the International Departures concourse, waving at their two grandmothers, holding hands as they walked onto the ramp to their plane.

  She had been grounded for coming home four hours later than planned and for the next week she had waved through the window as Tara—whose mother was less strict than Bay's—walked or rode her bike past the cottage every chance she got.

  And Bay remembered waving to Tara from the podium at her college graduation, from the back of Sean's motorcycle, the summer he had a BMW, from the altar at each of her children's christenings, and, embarrassed, from the deck of the Aldebaran, the first time he brought it over to Hubbard's Point, to moor off the beach so everyone would see.

  Life had a way of gaining meaning when she could share it with Tara. Mulling over the details of their days, observations and overheard bits of conversation, turning their hearts inside out.

  Their friendship was old and burnished; Bay couldn't imagine anything that would breech it. She and Tara were the Irish Sisterhood, heirs to their grandmothers.

  What good was a sisterhood without sisters?

  TARA HUNG UP THE PHONE.

  No matter what Bay said, Tara was determined to make it up to her.

  Hopping on her bike, Tara rode through beach roads. She stopped along the way, picking a bouquet of asters, goldenrod, and Queen Anne's lace, wildflowers to hand to Bay along with a poem she had spent a few sleepless nights composing.

  The poem was short in length, full in meaning, punchy yet lyrical, heartfelt to the very tips of her toes.

  She'd been browsing in Andy's Used Records yesterday, looking for a way to say with music the sentiments she had so far been too upset to articulate to Bay's face. But she had run smack into Joe Holmes at the “British Invasion” rack and had attempted to slink out of the aisle like a criminal on the FBI's top ten wanted list.

  “Miss O'Toole?” he had called after her, dropping his Let it Bleed on the floor in a suave crime-fighting move.

  Tara tried to ignore him, but he followed her into the parking lot. Evading the FBI in a town as small as Black Hall was guaranteed to be a losing proposition, so she turned to face him.

  “Why are you still here?” she asked.

  “Oh, tying up loose ends.”

  “Well. I certainly wish you'd tie them up and solve this case.”

  His eyes widened, and Tara couldn't believe she'd said that. He was very cute, in a geeky, federal agent sort of way—short brown hair, worry lines around his eyes, a bulge under his jacket that had to be a Glock 9, or something of that nature.

  “I'm sorry for being rude,” she said. “But my friend has had about as much as she can take.”

  “I know. And I'm very sorry about that. But I'm sure you can appreciate the fact that I have a case to investigate, and I still have lots of unanswered questions.”

  “Well, have you talked to the women Sean was seeing? I believe the most recent one was Lindsey Beale, a banker who lives in Westerly, I think,” Tara said, wanting to be helpful, but also hoping to remind him that Sean's bad behavior had taken him east of Black Hall, and enjoying the idea of Lindsey's sharing in some of Bay's current misery. Maybe he should concentrate his efforts in Rhode Island. . . .

  “Generally I ask the questions,” Agent Holmes said, half-smiling. “But yes. I have.”

  “Humph. Good,” Tara said, finding herself uncomfortably diverted by the agent's crooked half-smile. Sort of an Elvis-y thing, half lust and half evil. Or maybe half lust-and-evil together, and the other half sarcasm. Tara wasn't sure. She was very good at flirting, but when she really liked someone, she sometimes found herself groping for words.

  “Miss O'Toole,” he said. “I know we took up a lot of your time at the beginning of this investigation, but a few things have come to light, and I was wondering . . .”

  “Whether you could interrogate me again? Go ahead. Ask away.”

  Agent Holmes flinched slightly. Once again, she had knocked the man off balance. Had he been planning to haul her into the FBI office? She checked her watch. Even though she had nowhere pressing to go, she didn't want him to think that she was a woman without a destination.

  “Fine,” he said. And then he'd asked her a series of questions about offshore bank accounts, a safety-deposit box, and a silver cup. Tara listened, not really able to offer anything helpful.

  “Sorry,” she said. “The kids had silver baby cups . . . they used to drink their juice from them sometimes. Bay's mother gave them each one when they were born. And Sean had a bunch of trophy-type cups, from basketball seasons gone by . . .”

  “This cup is very old,” he said. “More like a goblet, no handles . . . would you take a look at it? It's in the office.”

  “Sure,” Tara said.

  Agent Holmes led her across the parking lot, toward a curtained storefront between the record store and coffee shop. Tara's pulse increased—not only because she was about to enter an FBI office, but because Agent Holmes had a really terrific, playful, and coconspiratorial smile. He almost made her think he needed her to solve this case. “I wish you could tell me why he did it,” Agent Holmes said, reaching into his pocket for his keys.

  “Why Sean did it?” Tara asked. “I wish you could tell me the same thing.”

  “Were there signs?”

  “We ask ourselves that,” Tara said, staring east, toward the beach. Even here in town, the air smelled like salt. “Did we ever know him at all?”

  “You knew him a long time,” he said. “Hard for a con man to fool everyone his whole life.”

  “Well, maybe it wasn't his whole life. But do people really . . . go bad?” Tara asked. “Like just out of the blue?”

  “Depends on how you define ‘bad,' ” the agent said, unlocking the door. Tara followed him inside and was surprised to see the place looking like a small, one-man insurance agency: fax machine, copier, computer, phone, piles of papers, McDonald's wrappers in the trash.

  “What do you mean?” Tara asked, breathing in his aftershave—spicy, with hints of lemon and cinnamon—as he leaned across her to hit the overhead lights.

  “Well, the FBI has a fairly broad definition of ‘bad.' But the average person's definition is even broader. When a man starts cheating on his wife, for example; it might be morally wrong, therefore ‘bad,' but not necessarily criminal.”

  “So, you're asking me when Sean started misbeha
ving?” Tara asked. “Or when he became a criminal? And does one lead to the other?”

  “Hard to say,” the agent said. “Sometimes, but not always.”

  “Well, Sean was always wild. A basketball star and powerboat guy who loved to drink beer and party. She was such a classic good girl, and opposites attract. Right?”

  “Seems that way,” Joe said, making Tara blush.

  “Well, anyway, it was one thing when we were kids. But it was another when he started running around, going to the casino.”

  “Was that a change in behavior—going to the casino, I mean?”

  “The casinos weren't always here. When we were growing up, eastern Connecticut was a bucolic little haven. Seaports on the shoreline, farms and cows inland. Lots of stone walls. But suddenly it's become Vegas in the Nutmeg State. I don't think anyone who grew up here saw it coming.”

  “Did Sean get into going right away?”

  “No—in fact, he used to gripe that the casinos would make it harder for him to get to his boat. The traffic would be worse, and he'd be stuck inching along on I-Ninety-five. He'd say that that part of the state was depressed, that his bank was always foreclosing on homes and farms out that way. And it was immoral, for the casinos to even exist—taking money from out-of-work people who couldn't even afford to feed their families.”

  “But he started eventually . . .”

  “Yes. A lot of people who stayed away at first—boycotting them, in effect—were curious. Sean took Bay to see a show there, his first time. Carly Simon, a few years ago. I went with them, with a date, and we all stayed to gamble. It was a novelty, but I never wanted to do it again.”

  “How about Bay?”

  “She liked it even less than I did. It depressed her, seeing so many old people dropping quarters into slot machines. She thought they were running through their retirement, coin by coin.” Tara smiled at Bay's words. “I remember her pointing to this little old lady, perched on a stool, with her arm through the handle of a coin basket as she pulled the handle over and over. There was a whole row of ladies like that, and they looked as if they lived there: personalized coin baskets, visors to cut the glare . . . ‘Can you imagine our grandmothers here?' Bay asked me, ‘instead of doing what they did? Instead of telling stories and teaching us how to garden, they could have taught us how to gamble.' ”

  “Did she disapprove of Sean going there?”

  “When he started going a lot . . . and lying about it.”

  “So, that contributed to their rift.”

  “Wouldn't it contribute to a rift with your wife?” Tara asked. “If every time she left the house she hightailed it out to be with someone else?”

  The agent turned red. He really did—Tara saw the heat in his neck and cheeks. He wasn't wearing a wedding ring. Of course, she wasn't either. She felt a shiver go down her back as he tilted his head and gave her that sexy half-smile again.

  “Can you tell me when it started?” he asked. “Can you relate it, at all, to the time he was passed over for the bank presidency?”

  Tara thought back. “It seems funny you'd mention that, but it was shortly after he lost that job. I remember he bought his new boat and started gambling, and Bay became more and more upset and worried. She thought he was having a really expensive midlife crisis. But I think he just let himself get corrupted.”

  “Corrupted,” Agent Holmes said. “That sounds like a very New England word.”

  “Don't forget,” Tara said. “We're in a state that was founded by Puritans. Thomas Hooker.”

  “Was Sean ever puritanical?”

  “No,” Tara said, laughing. “He was always fun, ready to have a good time, from the time we were kids. The big jerk.”

  “You're very close to his wife?”

  “Very,” Tara said, feeling another twinge about Bay. She decided to change the subject. “So, will you show me your gun?”

  “My gun?”

  “Yes. What is it?”

  “It's a ten-millimeter,” he answered, smiling. “You ask some interesting questions yourself, Miss O'Toole. You think like a cop.”

  “I come from a long line of cops,” she said. “My grandfather was the captain of detectives in Eastford. He was the number-one pistol shot in America, back in the forties.”

  “I know,” he said.

  “You do?” she asked, shocked.

  “Um, yes. Seamus O'Toole. You mentioned that your grandfather was an officer, and during the course of my investigation, I happened to look him up.”

  “Agent Holmes,” Tara said, smiling and raising an eyebrow.

  “So. Your grandfather was the number-one pistol shot . . .”

  “Yes,” Tara said. “I inherited his guns. But I didn't want them in the house, with Bay's kids coming over, so I donated them to the State Library. They have a big collection of Colt firearms.”

  “That's impressive,” he said. “So, Miss O'Toole . . .”

  “Call me Tara,” she said.

  “Okay,” he said. “Call me Joe.”

  “Wow. I'm on a first-name basis with the G,” she said.

  “Yes,” he said. “As I am with Captain Seamus O'Toole's granddaughter. Let me get the cup. Maybe you can help me figure out where McCabe got it. He had it in his safety-deposit box at Anchor Trust . . .”

  But just then his cell phone rang. It was important, and Tara had to go.

  He had said he would call her to reschedule, but so far he hadn't. Just as well, she thought, riding down the beach road. All she needed was to fall in love with the FBI agent trying to dig up dirt on Sean.

  And Joe Holmes was definitely material for falling in love. He seemed strong, as if he really knew who he was, Tara thought, wheeling up Bay's driveway on her bike. Her heart began racing as she knocked at the back door. Usually she just walked in and called out, “I'm home!”

  Bay came to the door wearing an old white beach shirt, cutoff jeans, and half-glasses. The bump on her head had gone down, leaving a yellowish bruise.

  “We just hung up!” Bay said, smiling.

  “Somehow, that little phone call couldn't say enough.”

  “Tara—stop. You've apologized too much already. I mean it, okay?”

  Tara looked past Bay, into her kitchen, and saw all the kids' pictures, the basket of shells she and Bay had picked up on their beach walks, the piece of driftwood they had found that looked like a monkey. She thought the lump in her throat would choke her, but she just shook her head and said, “No. Not okay. These are yours with a poem,” Tara said, handing the flowers to Bay.

  “They're beautiful,” Bay said.

  And then, clasping her hands, the way the nuns had taught her to do while reciting, Tara went for it:

  “Wildflowers

  So rare,

  To show you

  I care.

  You are gold,

  I'm brass,

  You should kick

  My ass

  But you know

  I'm your friend.

  I'll love you

  Till the end.”

  Bay stood there holding the wildflowers, her chin quivering and eyes flooding, but her face wreathed in an unambiguous smile. She opened her arms to grab Tara into a great hug.

  Relief washed over Tara like a wild wave—the storm surge that comes later, after the sun is out and the sea seems calm. She clutched Bay as hard as she could.

  “Oh, Bay,” she said. “I'm so sorry for being an idiot, a really big stupid idiot.”

  “Tara!” Bay said, pushing her slightly away, sounding very stern.

  “What?”

  “Love means never having to say you're a big stupid idiot.”

  Tara grinned. “No?”

  “No. Come in and drink coffee with me, okay?”

  “Till we get the caffeine jitters?”

  “Yes, exactly. French roast.”

  The telephone rang before the coffee could be poured. Tara was assembling mugs and silver spoons and glancing at the wan
t ads spread across the table while Bay answered the phone.

  “Yes . . .” Bay said. “I'm sorry . . . I didn't think that . . . Please, no, don't apologize . . . honestly, I understand . . . no, but . . . you're sure . . . well, actually, she's with me now . . . we can be there in fifteen minutes.”

  Bay hung up and turned to regard Tara with amused eyes.

  “Command performance,” she said.

  “What?” Tara asked. “Someone heard about my poem already and wants me to go on Star Search?”

  “Something like that,” Bay said. “Augusta Renwick wants to see us. Together. At her house, in fifteen minutes.”

  “Gulp,” Tara said.

  18

  AUGUSTA RENWICK PACED HER HOUSE. SHE TOOK a tour of every room and communed with her husband through some of his paintings. Not all of them “spoke” to her, but several did. His portraits of their daughters, for example. When Augusta viewed Hugh's paintings of Caroline, Clea, and Skye, she could feel his love for their children pouring through.

  “It's not enough, Hugh,” she said, standing before the large painting of the three girls at the piano, “that I have bungled so disastrously with my—our—own children. Now I have been a clod with someone else's.”

  Gravel crunched under tires in the driveway.

  “Here they are, my darling,” Augusta said, checking herself in the hall mirror: white hair, beige cashmere shawl over black cashmere ensemble, black pearls, the Vuarnet emeralds in her ears. Augusta so rarely wore them, but today she needed all the magic she could get.

  Knock-knock—a rather bold approach to the satyr's-head door knocker. Augusta always judged callers by the force or timidity of their knocks, and this person had true brass in their knuckles. Marvelously dauntless.

  “Entrée,” Augusta said, finding Bay and Tara standing on the wide porch.

  The two women walked in, dressed endearingly like hillbillies—cutoff jeans and flowing old shirts, Tara's tied around her middle.

  “Hello, Tara, hello, Bay,” Augusta said.

  “Hi, Mrs. Renwick,” they both said.

  “Call me Augusta. Let's step in here, shall we?” She led them through the living room, past Hugh's great painting of the Renwick Barn, past the shelves of Renwick silver, including the empty spot . . . What had she done with that cup? She adored drinking Florizars from it . . .