That and two names.
I set Kyle Donelly the task of running down contact information on Blum’s friends and left to pick my kids up from school. I parked in front of the low-slung, cheerless building and pushed through the big glass doors just as the last class was letting out. Rising above the clatter and jostle of escaping students I heard my daughter’s singing voice.
I edged toward the sound against the jagged tide of unshackled teenagers. When I got close enough I could see Carrie and her chubby friend, Patty Whelden. They had dammed off a space for themselves, a still pool in the torrent, and were singing a cappella to what looked like an Abercrombie & Fitch catalog shoot, five perfect girls with perfect hair, fringe-hem jeans, leather vests and jackets over logo t-shirts. One girl wore peg-leg jeans and another one sported a Union Jack t-shirt; the sneakers were different brands and colors. They probably thought they weren’t all dressed alike. But to someone not attuned to those subtle distinctions, they looked as similar as Labrador retriever puppies—chocolate, yellow, or black, English or American, it made no difference, even with the more exotic “fox red” or “polar white” variations. Labs all had the same big heads and floppy ears, the same thick coat, dangerous tail, and tendency to hip dysplasia.
And the girls…well, that’s where the analogy breaks down. Labs were friendly. These girls were anything but. I knew a couple of them. They had been Carrie’s BFFs once. Best Friend Forever? How about Best Friend For Now? The tallest one, Jill Porter, was the unofficial leader of the “Accidentals” and she did have a beautiful alto voice. But today she was listening. Carrie and Patty were singing a Taylor Swift song called “Mean.”
They finished to a sparse round of sarcastic applause from the “it” girls, which was quickly overwhelmed by a real ovation by a couple of dozen other kids who had stood still to listen, amid the diminishing outward churn of their classmates.
I clapped with the others and got a happy smile in return. Carrie skipped over and for one stunning second I thought she was going to hug me. In public. With her friends watching. She caught herself just in time. “Hi, Dad,” she said teetering back from the incriminating impulse.
“That was great,” I said.
“No it wasn’t. But thanks.”
I turned to her friend. I couldn’t help noticing that she was wearing too much makeup—Goth-style black lipstick and way too much eyeliner. I said nothing—her cosmetic choices weren’t my problem. Or so I thought.
“Seriously, Patty.” I said to her. “That sounded fantastic.”
She studied the shiny linoleum. “Hopefully it made them think for a second or two.”
“Yeah.”
Carrie jumped into the brief silence. “Can you drop me at Patty’s house? We have a rehearsal this afternoon.”
“And the play tonight.”
“Patty’s mom can take me.”
“Great.”
“Are you coming?”
“For closing night? Are you kidding?”
“Dad—”
“Sorry. I’ll wear sunglasses and a hoodie. No one will recognize me. Anyway, your mom’s going to be there, too”
“That should be fun. She’s bringing Joe.”
Joe Arbogast had to be one of the most exquisitely boring people I’d ever met. He knew the price of every property on Nantucket, which spec houses were selling, which ones were in foreclosure, which were in violation of abstruse zoning regulations—and he’d gladly pelt you with the details until you fled, as from a boy scout troop’s snowball barrage.
Fortunately the closing night of Jane’s North Pole Confidential would allow him few opportunities to “hold forth,” in my mother’s pet phrase for the behavior of marathon talkers. “Joe’s all right,” I said.
Carrie turned to Pattty. “At my house we play the Boring Game—you try to make up the most boring sentence you can. But Joe wins! He has the all-time gold medal. Tell her what he said, Dad.”
I didn’t like running down Miranda or her fiancé, but Joe had said the words, there was no getting away from that. I glanced around quickly. In the do-it-yourself surveillance state otherwise known as small-town-life, almost anything you said about anybody would get back to them somehow. But the corridor had cleared out. We were alone for the moment. And Joe’s line was a classic. ‘A girl I went to high school with just got a job with the phone company.’ You can’t beat that one. But don’t think about it too much. It’ll knock you right out. Objects will slip through your nerveless fingers.”
Carrie laughed; Patty was confused. It occurred to me that I might have had kids just so I could have some people around me who got my jokes.
Outside in the parking lot, Hector Cruz was teaching Tim to juggle. It was a perfect photograph for my personal slide show of sustainable human diversity on Nantucket, and it made me feel better than it probably should have. It didn’t mean as much as I wanted it to, any more than Billy Delavane’s friendship with Brazilian painter Francisco Silva did. Mike Henderson’s relationship with Francisco was more encouraging. Mike seemed to accept that Francisco could work twice the hours he could, for half the pay, and still stand Mike for drinks at the Box when he was done. Mike worked for Francisco sometimes, when the Brazilian needed a fine touch on trim or a window sash.
As to Hector and Tim, Hector had apologized for his part in the cheating business and even defended Tim from Jake Sauter, the fat bully who’d been making Tim’s life miserable for years. Hector had ended Sauter’s reign of terror, invoking the Nantucket Whalers during a tense confrontation in the dining hall, a few days before. He had stepped between the other two boys.
“You’re on my team, Jake. And I’m on his team. You know what that means?”
“I…I’m on his team?”
“Right! It’s a syllogism. Just like we learned in math class.”
“But with people.”
Hector clapped him on the back. “Es toy orgulloso de ti! Echale ganas.”
“He’s teaching us Spanish,” Tim explained later. We were driving to the MSPCA. I had already dropped off the girls, and since I was bringing Tim out to Miranda’s house, she asked if I’d pick up her cat from the vet, on the way. In fact, it was out of the way, but I had always liked Ellie, the ancient Abyssinian we had found in a Los Angeles street and tamed with food, long before the kids were born. After a successful thyroid surgery and a night at the animal hospital, she was ready to come home this afternoon, albeit with a lifetime prescription for hormone supplement pills and a bag of weird new food that would probably incite a prolonged hunger strike.
When I was filling out forms at the main desk and listening to the pilling instructions, Tim said, “Can I see the bless you animals?”
Judy, the lady behind the desk, glanced up from the instruction sheet we were reviewing. “The what?”
“The rescue animals up for adoption?” I clarified. “Tim called them that one day when he was five years old and it just kind of stuck. Now it’s part of the family language. Like calling Wheat Chex and Cheerios ‘surreal.’ Or ‘casting aspirins’ when you say something mean about someone.”
“Wow. My family can barely use regular language. Bless you animals! That’s so great. We should use that in our next fundraiser.”
Tim was getting impatient. “I know the way.”
“Sure, honey, go on back.” When he had started down the corner she turned back to me. “Bless you animals! Kids are amazing.”
“They can be highly entertaining.”
“You guys are doing such a great job with them.”
“Well…we’re trying real hard not to fuck them up…pardon my language. It’s like carrying a Ming vase for eighteen years. My advice—don’t drop it.”
She smiled. “So far, so good.”
When we went back to collect Tim, I realized my mistake. He was in the middle of a major love-fest with Pr
essman’s Portuguese water dog, Bailey. The attendant had opened the big cage and they were rolling around on the floor.
“Carlos!” Judy bleated.
“It’s okay,” Carlos said. “Just for a minute or two? Look at them.”
When Bailey was back in his cage I heard the question every parent dreads. “Can we keep him?”
“There’s no dogs allowed at the house. It’s in the lease.” That was a slight exaggeration but I knew the Frakers wouldn’t be pleased to have a dog in the place. They were not dog people. They were “Why can’t we enforce the leash laws?” people.
“But what if no one takes him and they put him to sleep?”
“Someone will take him. He’s a beautiful dog.”
“Then someone else will have our dog!”
“He’s not our dog. We can’t adopt a dog. It’s—too much work.”
“I’ll take care of him.”
“No you won’t. Which, I mean—that’s fine, you shouldn’t have to. It’s a whole other job and you have a job right now, which is going to school. And Jane and I have jobs, too.”
“Lots of people have jobs! And they still have dogs. Billy Delavane has a job and he has Dervish!”
“It’s not happening, Tim. Our life is—full. There’s no room in it for a dog. End of discussion.”
As we were walking out, Judy said, “Good luck with that vase.”
I took the words to heart. I was having other child-rearing problems that winter, mostly involving Jane Stiles and the two teenagers who had just parachuted into her life like commandos on a wartime sabotage mission. It had been a successful raid, worthy of the OSS, from the piles of clothes on the floor to the stained towels in the bathroom to the books left on the wet kitchen countertops. No charcoal-smudged team of expendables blowing up bridges and ammo dumps could have done a more effective job. The enemy was reeling.
But she was starting to fight back.
“I’m not sure how we’re supposed to do this,” Jane said a few minutes later, after I had dropped off Tim and the cat. We had the Darling Street house to ourselves for the night. She was standing at the kitchen sink washing the leftover dishes from a hasty breakfast. I grabbed a Marimekko dishcloth and took a plate from the drainer.
“You wash, I dry, we both put away?”
“Henry—”
“Or—we get a dishwasher, as soon as possible.”
She forced a narrow smile. “That would help.”
“But that’s not what you’re talking about.”
“No.”
“Second thoughts?”
“No, no it’s just—how is this supposed to work? Your kids, my kid, your rules, my rules…”
“My rules are pretty basic. Just what’s needed for civilized coexistence—inside voices, politeness. Brush your teeth, finish your homework before you watch TV. Chew with your mouth closed, do your dishes—”
“Well, that’s what I’m talking about. Nobody did any dishes this morning.”
“We were running late.”
“Rinse a bowl, put it in the dish drainer. It takes ten seconds. You spend more time thinking about it. If everyone just does it, like a habit, like marking your place in a book, or rolling up the car windows, then it never becomes a chore, and you know what chapter you’re on and the car seats stay dry when it’s raining and the mess doesn’t accumulate. Doesn’t that make sense?”
I put away the plate I was holding. “Of course it does. I’m working on that. We fight about it all the time.”
“But they win the fights.”
“Not always.”
She turned off the water, took a breath.
“Look—I don’t want to be the wicked stepmother—or whatever I am. The wicked live-in girlfriend. But it’s kind of—it’s a sanity question, Henry. Seriously. I’m very sensitive to my environment. I don’t think you have any idea how sensitive. Chaos makes me crazy. I can’t work with the house the way it is now. I can’t concentrate. Carrie rolls in and dumps everything on the floor and makes a snack and leaves everything out on the kitchen table, and—she’s like a tornado, Henry. There’s rubble behind her everywhere she goes. Sorry. But, I mean…I’m constantly cleaning just to keep up…just to maintain some equilibrium. I know that makes me sound compulsive or something, but I’m not. It’s normal. I’m normal. Everyone likes cleanliness and order. They like to be able to find things and not get sick from living in their own house.”
“Hey—”
“I’m not saying that. It’s not a health hazard anymore. I scrubbed out the mildew. It’s just—this isn’t some philosophical issue with them. Or some teen political thing—‘Neatness is so bourgeois’ or ‘Chaos is my statement.’ I know kids like that. Your kids aren’t like that. No one complains when I pick up their dirty laundry! They just don’t want to make the effort. They’re lazy! Sorry, but—”
“I know, I know. You’re right.”
“I guess what I’m saying—asking…is—I want to make sure it’s okay with you if I kind of…if I go to war on this. I hate confrontation. I suck at it. But I feel like I don’t have a choice right now. If we’re all going to live here together.”
“Feel free. I hope you do better than me.”
“I’m small but relentless. You should see me negotiating a book contract.”
“Doesn’t your agent—?”
“I fired him. He didn’t even understand what a rights reversion clause was.”
“Yikes. Come here.”
She took a step closer and I pulled her into a hug. “Where do you want to start?”
She kissed my collarbone, pulled away and took my hand. “I’ll show you.”
She led me into the bathroom we shared with Carrie. Not a classic piece of architectural design, but it was a big comfortable renovation with two sinks, a clawfoot tub and stall shower, with lots of mirrored cabinets and veiny marble tile on the floor, softened (and made safe for wet feet) by a pair of Marlo Jacquard bath rugs in a muted gray pattern that matched the towels. Jane pulled one of the towels off the bar and handed it to me. “See for yourself.”
I turned it over and immediately saw the black streaks. I had noticed the marks before but I’d made the half-conscious choice to ignore them, assuming they were temporary.
“These don’t wash out?”
“Pre-soaking doesn’t work. Bleaching will just ruin them. I tried the miracle products—spots-be-gone, all that stuff. Nothing.”
“So we replace them.”
“And I’m okay with that. But I’m not doing it more than once.”
I knew the culprit. Patty Whelden virtually lived with us these days. Her mother collected feral cats and was kind of a feral cat herself. Half of Patty’s clothes had wound up at our house, and on our floor, as Jane had pointed out. Patty slept over every few days, and I got the feeling sometimes that the only square meals she ever got were the ones I served up. She loved my pasta. She wasn’t quite moved in yet, but her makeup had started to overflow from Carrie’s cabinet. Carrie used very little herself—some pale lip gloss, a jar of foundation, that was it.
But Patty’s Goth look required some serious products. I checked them out. She had all the cool brands—Bare Minerals white concealer, Urban Decay black lipstick and dark eye shadow palettes, Rimmel ScandalEyes Retroglam mascara, Smashbox eyeliner, Eve Lom cold cream for cleaning all the gunk off.
I pulled out the narrow eyeliner pen, uncapped it. “I think we’ve found the weapon, Inspector Stiles.”
Jane took it, nodded. “The towel smells like her Eve Lom.”
“I’ll trust you on that. So…means, motive, and opportunity. I’m not sure any of this will be admissible in court without a warrant, though.”
“We’ll plead it out. Carrie and Patty help us pay for the new towels and then get some cheap ones they can ruin to their hearts
’ content.”
“Sounds good.”
She paused, as you might before opening a suspect closet door, half expecting an avalanche of random junk.
“What?” I asked.
“It’s Tim and my books. I don’t mind him looking at them, he was great with the move, helping me get them out of boxes onto the shelves here. But…well, I found one of my fore-edge books in the kitchen the other day. On a wet countertop.”
“Oh.”
We had some history with those books, antiques with paintings on the outer edges of the pages that were only visible when you fanned them out. After a yard sale in September, Jane had briefly suspected Tim of stealing one of them. The culprit had turned out to be our own Town Sherriff Bob Bulmer, but it made kind of a rocky start between Jane and my son. Apparently he hadn’t lost his interest in her antique editions.
“It’s funny about those books,” she said. “They belonged to my dad but they were never mentioned in the will. My two sisters and I just kind of divvied things up in the house before we put it on the market and no one else wanted the library, so I got it by default. Technically, they’re still his. I’m just the caretaker. I guess that’s not exactly the legal situation. But that’s how it feels.”
I didn’t answer her. I was thinking. She had made a connection for me. There was an answer I needed in what she’d been saying but I couldn’t grasp it. It felt like a memory lapse, not a failure of deductive intelligence—like some movie star’s name that I couldn’t recall. A “senior moment,” though I was a few decades shy of that designation, or that problem. So then what was it? How did her ambiguous ownership of her father’s stuff tie in with my casework? Because that was how it felt. There was a key to my investigation, to some investigation, in what she had just said. Pressman’s drug deals? The Red Tickets rip-off? Coddington’s murder?
Nantucket Red Tickets Page 24
