The Summer I Dared: A Novel

by Barbara Delinsky

“Doesn’t he have family? Children? Siblings?”

  “He has all of the above. Big Sawyer is packed with Cranes. He’s probably related to half the people on this deck.”

  “Then why is he sitting alone?”

  “Because he chooses to. And he isn’t one of a kind that way. There are probably half a dozen tables inside with one, maybe two people. There are lots of loners around here. That’s one of the things I’ve always loved about Big Sawyer—or any of these islands, for that matter. No one looks at you funny if you sit alone. There’s no stigma to it. People like space—it’s as simple as that. They’re used to having it. Lobstering is a solitary profession.”

  “They don’t actually fish alone, do they?” Molly asked.

  “Usually in pairs, but it’s still pretty solitary, when it’s day after day, week after week.”

  Julia was perplexed. “I’d have thought that precisely for that reason they’d appreciate being with people when they’re back on land.” She glanced around the deck, but didn’t see Noah Prine. She wondered if he was inside.

  “Oh, the lobstermen congregate,” Zoe went on. “They talk about the weather and bait and the size of their catch, but it isn’t the kind of chitchat you and I know. People who can survive lobstering—or fishing in general—or living on an island, for that matter, are people who like being alone. Which isn’t to say,” she added, looking up, grin wider, “that there aren’t people here who are social.” She opened an arm to greet a trio who approached, two men and a woman, all midthirties, give or take, wearing sweaters and jeans. “Gouache, giclée, and silk screen,” she said, pointing at each respectively to indicate his or her artistic medium, and the threesome couldn’t have been nicer. They asked Julia about the accident and how she was feeling; they expressed concern for Kimmie Colella; and they talked about the possibility that Artie Jones was murdered. Apparently, it didn’t matter whether one knew the man personally or not. If it turned out that he was murdered, islanders would go after the perpetrator with as much fervor as if he had truly been one of their own.

  As discussions went, it was heavy. By the time the artists moved off, Julia was feeling a whiff of the restlessness that had hit her earlier. Sensing her mother’s mood, Molly changed the subject.

  “How big is the kitchen here?” she asked Zoe.

  “Rick plus three do the cooking, six wait tables, another three out back doing clean-up.”

  “Where does he get his meat?”

  “It’s delivered fresh from Portland every day.”

  “Is the fish local?”

  “Not all of it. Our fleet can’t get tuna, or halibut, or shrimp. That’s up from Portland, too.”

  Their drinks arrived, iced tea for three. The waitress delivering them was the same perky young woman who had delivered Matthew Crane’s meal. By Julia’s estimate, she was no older than Molly. “Ready to order, ladies?” the girl asked.

  Julia studied the menu. It was extensive—and, yes, included the kinds of staples Zoe had mentioned, though done with a twist. Steak was served on couscous, with a trio of sauces and sides of corn pudding and wood-grilled asparagus. Meat loaf contained peppers and basil, and was served with garlic mashed potatoes and salsa. Fried chicken had a cornbread crust and was served on a bed of mesclun greens, with a hash of honeyed carrots and beets. The fish choices were extensive, including novel incarnations of cod, bass, tuna, shrimp, scallops, mussels, clams, and lobster. And, of course, there were ribs—all you could eat for a fixed price. And more salads than Julia had expected. Many of them were on the specials menu along with the ribs, a separate page inserted into the larger menu, this one beautifully designed, with the day’s date at the top.

  She looked up to find all eyes on her. Zoe and Molly had already ordered. They were waiting for her to decide. “Oh. I’m sorry.” She smiled at the waitress and ordered the tuna salad, which wasn’t made with any ordinary, canned tuna. This tuna was billed as being fresh, lightly grilled, served warm and thinly sliced over mesclun greens, with Parmesan bread sticks and a Chianti vinaigrette.

  “How would you like that cooked?” the waitress asked.

  “Rare, please,” Julia said and passed her the menu. As soon as the girl was gone, she said to Zoe, “Great menu. Is this all Rick’s doing?”

  “It’s a joint effort. Anyone who travels brings back ideas.”

  “And the printing?”

  Zoe smiled proudly. “We computer-literate artists take turns. Rick pays with free meals. Our dinner tonight is on the house.”

  Loud laughter erupted from the fruit guys’ table, erasing Zoe’s smile. She turned and stared—as did half of the people on the deck. The men continued to snicker and snort, seeming oblivious to the attention they’d drawn.

  Zoe faced front again, angry now. “We get summer people who are loud. Artie Jones was one, but he and eight other people are dead. We’ve just buried four of them right here, yet those guys are laughing away. They’re trouble.”

  The same sentiment prevailed down the street in the cavernous back room at Brady’s Tackle & Gear. Cartons lined the walls, stacked haphazardly, three thick at places, five high at others. A pair of desks stood under fluorescents in the open space, along with an assortment of chairs. Some were made of wood, some metal; all were old. Conversely—by island standards, at least—the men occupying them were young. Seven strong, they formed the core of the local lobstermen’s association—the trap group, as it was known—and were generally accepted to embody the future of Big Sawyer. They were cleaner than usual now, most having showered for Hutch’s funeral. Those who had worn slacks then were back to T-shirts and jeans. Some held beer cans, others coffee in Styrofoam cups. Some straddled their chairs, others rocked on back legs.

  Hayes Miller ran the Willa B. out of a slip at the pier. A full-bearded barrel of a man, he was a third-generation lobsterman and knew all the rules. “They’re trouble,” he charged. “No good’s ever come of a West Rock boat down here. West Rockers are supposed to drag for scallops. They got no business hauling traps.”

  “Leastways not in our waters,” remarked Leslie Crane. He was a distant Crane cousin, a man of medium height and wiry strength. He hauled traps from My Andrea, named for his wife, who was currently expecting their fifth child. All those mouths to feed made Leslie more possessive of his catch. Traps set near his, where they had no right to be, took money from his pocket, bread from his table.

  Joe Brady was the unofficial moderator of the group and as close to a harbormaster as Big Sawyer had. Dark-haired, with a trim beard and a less weathered look, he didn’t run a lobstering operation himself, just the tackle and gear store. But he came from a family of lobstermen and knew as much about the trade as the others. The little distance he had from day-to-day fishing gave him perspective. When tempers rose, his was the voice of reason. “So what do we know about them?” he asked now.

  “Names are Haber and Welk,” said John Mather. A quiet, bespectacled man, he owned the Trapper John. “They bought the boat up in Nova Scotia and outfitted it with everything you can imagine. They’re up from Florida themselves.”

  “Word is, they bought eight hundred traps.”

  “That’s legal,” said Elton Hicks. At fifty-five, he was the senior member of the group and its most traditional.

  “Bet they’ve gone over.”

  “More’n eight hundred?”

  “Well, why not? Who’s gonna know?”

  “Hayes is right,” said Mike Kling. He and his father hauled from the Mickey ’n Mike. Mickey was something of a legend with regard to the size of his catch, not to mention the speed of his boat. He was the perennial favorite in the lobster boat races each Fourth of July. His son promised to inherit all that, which was why he was part of the group. At twenty-nine, he was its youngest and only shaved-headed member. He was also its most imaginative. “Remember those guys up on Salinica Island year before last? They dropped three hundred traps over the limit, all with forged tags. They’d have gotten away with
it, if the Coast Guard hadn’t got a tip. So maybe one of us has to make a phone call. If you ask me, those guys are prime suspects.”

  “Prime suspects in what?” Noah asked. He had been listening to the discussion with his elbows on his knees and his jaw set tight. “Are we talking lobstering or murder?”

  The room was still.

  Joe was somber. “Both. Think about where the fruit guys have the greatest concentration of traps.”

  “Up Little Sawyer,” Mike answered. The front legs of his chair hit the ground. He shot Noah an excited look. “Isn’t that where The Beast went after its first buzz of the Amelia Celeste? So what if Artie ran those twin props right through the fruit guys’ lines, and what if Haber and Welk were pissed enough to pull out their rifle and take a shot?”

  “If he’s hit, why’s he keep driving The Beast?” Joe asked reasonably.

  “Maybe he’s hit too bad to move. Maybe the loss of blood made his heart give out sooner rather than later. Maybe he’s dead there and then.”

  “What about the kill switch?” Leslie asked. “If he fell, that would’ve stopped the boat.”

  Hayes gave a grim laugh. “Artie? Guy like that’s too macho to hook himself up to any kill switch.”

  “So if I’m right,” Mike went on, “Haber and Welk committed murder. Get ’em on that charge, and we can say bye-bye to their buoys.”

  “But can anyone prove they were the ones shot Artie?” Joe asked. “Last I heard, the medical examiner couldn’t tell for sure what kind of gun was used.”

  “It’s simple,” Mike maintained. “Search the fruit guys’ boat, find a weapon, show it was fired last Tuesday.”

  “Hah,” Elton exclaimed. “And what if they say they were shooting at seals? It’s done all the time. Hell, I do it myself. Damn seals get in our traps and eat our catch. We all shoot at seals.”

  “You could prove they were on the water at the right time,” Mike insisted.

  “But you couldn’t prove exactly where they were on the water unless you had a witness,” Joe said.

  “You could find a witness. Someone must’ve seen them during the day. We all know roughly where the rest of us were. Wouldn’t that be neat, killing two birds with one stone?”

  The group fell silent. It was a minute before Joe said, “You’re quiet, Noah. What’re you thinking?”

  Noah was thinking about Hutch and Ian—Hutch, because he wasn’t cold in his grave, and Ian, because his absence was huge. It hadn’t helped seeing the excitement on Julia Bechtel’s face when her daughter had pulled up in that truck. Noah had felt an even greater emptiness then, an even greater sense of failure.

  He could have made more of his life. He had said it to Julia and had repeated it a dozen times to himself since then—and it had nothing to do with lobstering. Nor did it have anything to do with a college education or making money in New York. He meant personally. Sandi. His son. His father. Hell, he hadn’t even talked much to his mother, sweet as she was.

  “Noah?” Joe coaxed.

  “There’s one problem with the theory,” Noah said. “Fog.” And suddenly that infuriated him. If it hadn’t been for fog, Hutch would be alive and Noah would have gone on living the same life he had lived for the past ten years.

  For a time, no one spoke.

  Finally, Joe said to the others, “He’s right. We were in a thick of it when the accident happened. The fruit guys couldn’t have seen who was cutting their lines.”

  “They didn’t have to see,” Mike insisted. “They could hear. Everyone knows Artie’s boat. It’s the only one like it up here this early in the season. What if they took a blind shot and lucked out?”

  “It’s a stretch, Mike.”

  “That kind of fog, it wasn’t a shot from shore,” John put in with quiet certainty.

  “So,” Joe reasoned, “if the shot didn’t come from another boat or from land, it had to have come from aboard The Beast.”

  Hayes looked flummoxed. “You think he shot himself?”

  Mike’s eyes widened. “Suicide. That’d be something.” He made a face. “What kind of moron thinks to kill himself with a shoulder shot?”

  Leslie had been quiet for a time. He remained thoughtful now. “I’d say maybe someone shot him before he left his dock, only Artie’d have to be a double moron to have left the dock with a gunshot wound.”

  “Unless he feared for his life, so he had to leave.”

  “Or he wanted to die on the water. Remember Caleb Dracut?”

  “Caleb was terminally ill. Artie Jones was not.”

  “How do we know?”

  “The Chief woulda said. He talked with Artie’s wife.”

  “Maybe she needs a suspect. Insurance doesn’t pay for suicide.”

  “Now there’s another thought,” Mike picked up. “What if she hired someone to kill him?”

  Hayes snorted. “Listen to you. Why would a hit man aim for the shoulder, any more than Artie would himself?”

  Joe sighed. “I’m beat, I want to get home, and Noah just buried Hutch and is doing us a favor being here, so we need to make a decision. What’re we going to do about the fruit guys setting their traps over ours? My brother Gil is ready to shoot them.”

  “I’ll shoot them,” Noah remarked so coolly that every face turned his way.

  “Very funny,” Joe said.

  “I’m serious,” Noah said. For a week, he’d done nothing of merit. He was ready to act. “A few holes at the waterline? They’d bail like hell, but they wouldn’t sink, and even if they did sink, they wouldn’t drown. They have flotation. Let them spend a few hours in North Atlantic water.” He thought of Hutch, who had probably died so suddenly he hadn’t felt a thing, cold or otherwise, and again, he felt a dire need to act. It didn’t much matter whether Haber and Welk had shot Artie. Those intrusive buoys were reason enough for a little mayhem. More than reason enough.

  “You’re angry,” Joe said.

  Noah turned on him. “Damn right, I’m angry.”

  “Shooting isn’t the way to go.”

  “It’d sure make me feel better.” That said, his anger was marginally diffused.

  “No shooting,” said Elton. “Not yet. First, we send a message.”

  “Want me to cut a few lines?” Mike asked, searching the group for an okay. “There’s a message.”

  “Knots are better,” John reasoned, pushing up his glasses. “Knotted lines can’t get through the winch. They wouldn’t be able to pull any traps.”

  “That’ll only slow them down,” Mike argued. “If we cut their lines, they lose their traps. That’ll cost them.”

  “What if they cut our lines right back?”

  “We’ll cut more of theirs. We’ll haul their traps and empty them out.”

  “Hell, I don’t want to spend my day hauling their traps,” Leslie argued. “And I can’t get into a full-fledged gear war. It costs too much. Look. The goal’s to get them out of our space. We don’t care where the hell they go, as long as it’s somewhere else. I agree with John. Knot the lines. If they knot ours back, we’ll know where they stand.”

  Joe looked around. “Everyone agree?”

  No one disagreed. The plan was considered adopted.

  Feeling suddenly, acutely restless, Noah rose from his chair. He shook hands with Joe and Leslie, nodded briefly at the others, and went out the door at full stride. Had he looked off to the west, he would have seen a horizon layered with orange and gray, where the last of the day’s sun spilled around distant clouds. But his eyes were low as he went up the alley between the health clinic and Brady’s, and once he rounded the corner and started down Main Street, Lucas was by his side.

  The view of the horizon was gone. Dusk had fallen here. The island store was still open, screen door slapping against its frame with each coming and going. This time of day, though, most of the activity was at the Grill. He could hear the muted drone of talk from the deck and the clink of dishes and flatwear from the dishwashers at the back window.r />
  He and his dog weren’t alone. There were others on the road leading down to the dock, but he didn’t look at them. He didn’t want any more condolences, wasn’t in the mood. He was still thinking of Hutch, still thinking of Ian, but he was thinking of Artie now, too. It would be convenient if Artie’s wife had hired a hit man—convenient if that someone had just propped Artie at the wheel of The Beast and aimed the boat out to sea, thinking it would keep going until it was swallowed up, as if the ocean were a black hole. Then there’d be someone for Noah to go after. It would be very convenient.

  But plausible? He didn’t think so. He had his own theory, and it was making him uncomfortable.

  He could be wrong. He had been distracted that night, upset about Hutch and bone tired. He hadn’t looked hard at the others in the stern. So how could he know for sure? Taking his venom out on the fruit guys was one thing; they were guilty as sin when it came to trespass. Tossing out accusations that might hurt the innocent was something else.

  The one person he could talk to without doing instant damage was Julia Bechtel. She might have seen something without realizing it—or not seen something. He’d have to think about talking with her.

  Meanwhile, he couldn’t sit and do nothing. So he made for the Leila Sue, released her lines, and backed out of the slip. With Lucas near his leg, he steered out of the harbor. Once past its limits, he throttled up. Night fell. He turned on his instruments, but barely gave them a glance. Guided by his familiarity with the waters and a keen sense of purpose, he cruised to the spot with the largest aggregation of lime-purple-lime buoys and began knotting lines. He didn’t knot every one, deliberately skipped bunches in a row. There was satisfaction in thinking that Haber and Welk would find a few knots followed by a clear stretch and think they were done, then be annoyed all over again when they ran into more a mile on.

  He enjoyed himself so much that he stayed out longer and covered more ground than he planned—knotting lines for Hutch now, even more than for himself. Hutch believed in the law of the seas. He believed that local fishermen had a moral authority when it came to protecting their turf. Noah couldn’t think of a more fitting tribute to Hutch, on this day of his burial, than this.