by Noel Hynd
Someone local, obviously. A workman, no doubt. Or a salesman. Or someone from the town. Or—much, much worse, some complete dip! An autograph seeker or a hopelessly untalented buffoon with a half-written half-baked hopelessly unprofessional script home somewhere in his sock drawer. She would give him, she decided, living hell. She flung open the wooden interior door but kept the screen in place.
“Yes?” she snapped. “What is it?”
“Hello,” the man said. He smiled engagingly. The blue of his shirt matched his eyes. “Sorry to bother you.”
“You are bothering me!” Her tone ranged between icy and hostile. “I’m in the middle of something important,” she said, folding her arms. “You’ve come at a terrible time. What do you want?”
He gazed at her for a second and Annette wondered whether or not he had recognized her. “Yes, I’m the Annette Carlson,” she was prepared to say. “Yes, I’m the actress and would you please go away!”
But the man gave no indication at all that he recognized her or knew who she was. “Am I at Seventeen Cort Street?” he asked.
“The number’s on the mailbox. Who are you?” she demanded.
He reached into the breast pocket of his shirt. Her eyes followed his hand. He withdrew a small black leather case, rectangular and smaller than a billfold. Then he opened it to reveal an ornate silver shield and an embossed identification card sealed in plastic.
“I’m Detective Timothy Brooks,” he said. “Nantucket Police Department. Earlier today you made a nonemergency call to our department.”
She looked at his badge and experienced a sinking feeling. Of course! Earlier that morning she had made the call to the police. Reluctantly, her tone softened. Something within her, something buried deeply in her middle-class American upbringing—still perceived a policeman as a figure of authority and respect.
“Yes. Right,” she said after a final moment of hesitation.
He returned his badge and ID to his pocket.
He offered his hand. She accepted it.
She gave her own name as Ann Carlson. “How did you know I was home?” she asked.
“I have a hunch about those things,” he said. “You told our dispatcher that you’ve had a prowler the last couple of nights. A ‘woman in white’?” he asked. “About two to two thirty A.M. one night. Last night maybe about three A.M.”
“Yes,” she said tentatively. “That’s correct.” She hesitated. Somehow in daylight, the rambling of a nocturnal imagination seemed petty. Silly. Unreal. But, “I suppose you’d better come in,” she said.
“Thank you.”
Annette stepped away from the door and allowed him to enter. She walked him to the living room and invited him to sit down. He chose the rocker. She picked the sofa.
Then Annette explained why she had called. She tried to be very rational and straightforward. She wasn’t crazy, after all, she kept reminding herself. And she was sure that she had seen something.
She described it the way she had remembered it, but cut out any supernatural implications. There had been a woman in her room, she said, then maybe another one—she couldn’t be sure—puttering around downstairs the next night. Both times, the intruder was gone before the lights went on.
“Scary, huh?” he asked.
“Yes,” she admitted. “It was.”
“Some prowlers can move very quickly when they’ve been spotted,” he said.
“I guess so.” She drew a breath. “The house was properly locked. I don’t know how anyone could have gotten in. Or out.”
He nodded.
“Why didn’t you call us when it was happening?” Tim Brooks asked.
Her eyes lowered. “I don’t know. Middle of the night. Single woman with a crazy story.” Her eyes rose. “Besides, it was over by the time I would have called. So I didn’t know what kind of response I’d get.”
“We would have sent a patrol car,” Brooks said. “If there’s a problem, it’s our job to investigate. Will you remember that for the future?”
She felt somehow reassured. “Okay,” she said.
“And you don’t think you were dreaming?”
She hesitated. “No.”
“Have you changed your locks recently?” he asked. “How do you know someone doesn’t have a key?”
“I don’t,” she admitted.
“Look,” he said steadily, “if you actually saw something, chances are you had a prowler. And I’ll make you a bet that there’s at least one access to this house that doesn’t lock properly. Friendly bet, okay? May I take a look?”
“Be my guest,” Annette said.
Brooks stood. He walked to the front door of the house and examined it. It was securely locked. Then he walked through the living room, looking carefully at the lower panes of each window. Once, he stopped to feel something, making sure a pane was firm. When he was satisfied that it was, he went to the next window.
From there he walked into the dining room. Annette did not follow. She knew what he was doing. He was examining all of the entry points to the house. She heard him in the kitchen next. Finally, Brooks fiddled with the back door and its locks. Then she heard his voice.
“Ms. Carlson?” he called.
“Yes?”
“Would you mind coming here for a moment?”
When she arrived, the detective was standing by the back door, which he held open. “Look at this,” he said. He motioned to the doorknob.
She looked where he indicated. “What about it?” she asked.
“Does it feel like it’s locked?”
She held her hand on it and tested it. It did.
“Same as the other night?”
“The same.”
“Lock me out,” he requested as he stepped through the doorway. “Lock both doors, then stand inside and wait.” She closed both the screen door and the heavier rear door, dropping a hook into a small eye on the screen door, and turning a lock on the wooden one.
She stepped back
“Ready?” he called from outside.
“Ready!” she answered.
Annette stood within the interior vestibule and watched. Behind her, some newspapers rustled, distracting her. A breeze must have rippled through the kitchen window, she thought. But she hadn’t felt one.
“Watch carefully!” the policeman called.
She couldn’t see through the door, but she could hear. Tim Brooks fussed with the screen. He did something abrupt to it. She heard the hook and eye come unlatched with a small rattle. Annette felt a surge of anxiety. She felt her palms begin to sweat, transposing the sounds of the policeman breaking in to those of an imagined intruder.
She stared at the doorknob before her. It started to turn, gently at first, then more forcibly. It moved rapidly from one side to the other as Brooks twisted it.
Annette felt a tremor of something. But she couldn’t tell what.
Fear? But, why? It was only the detective’s hand on the other side of the door.
Wasn’t it?
Or were the two of them starting to investigate something they shouldn’t—trying to assess answers to questions best left unasked?
“Silly!” she told herself. “Get this notion out of your head, girl!” She watched carefully. The doorknob turned firmly from one side to the other, Timothy’s hand continuing to work from the outside. Then the knob turned more sharply. Annette took her eyes off it because a soft creak in the room behind her startled her. But the footfall, if it had been one, or the heat, or the wind again, was invisible.
She sensed the ghost anew, or one of the ghosts. And then, just as fast, her sense of it was gone. She looked all through the room and there was nothing.
No presence. Nothing. An empty welcoming room.
She turned her attention back to the doorknob. Brooks twisted it a final time all the way to the left. Then he jerked it hard in the opposite direction.
It made a muffled snapping noise. The only corresponding sound Annette could think of was that of the neck being snapped
on some animal. She had no idea where such an image might have come from. Nor did she have time to consider it. Slowly, the door opened.
Unnerved, Annette stepped backward.
“Boo,” Brooks said. He grinned amiably.
She looked at him, then at the doorknob again, then back to the policeman. She tried to sort out the implications. But as he opened the door and stepped into the house, Annette suffered one of those tremors again. She almost felt as if something had slipped icily past her and departed the house.
She glanced around, anxious and distracted. Oh, hell. Oh, hell, she cursed at herself. Get a grip on yourself. Stop imagining all this crap. Keep control of your mind. It’s daytime, anyway!
“How did you do that?” she asked.
He produced a credit card.
“There’s enough slack in the screen door so that someone can jimmy the hook upward from the outside,” he said. “All you need is a piece of hard plastic. Like a credit card. As for the doorknob…” He shrugged. “Try it yourself,” he offered.
She moved to the spot where he stood. Then he talked her into standing outside the closed door and trying the knob from the rear doorstep. At first, when the door was locked, the knob seemed steady. But when Annette moved it rapidly back and forth, and then applied some force, the knob gave way. There was no surprise. It had done the same for Tim Brooks. She raised her eyes and looked at him.
“Look,” he said. “This might connect with something else I know about.” He paused. “But I’d need to drive you around a few corners from here to meet someone. It would take maybe another half an hour of your time. Half an hour, maximum,” he promised.
She hesitated.
He nudged her toward a decision. “It might give you some peace of mind if this works out the way I think it might,” he promised.
“When would you need this ‘thirty minutes, maximum’?”
“How about right now?” He smiled hopefully and waited. “I have a car,” he said.
“All right,” she said. “Thirty minutes, maximum. Like you promised.”
She locked her house. Then Tim Brooks led her to his car which was parked around front. Despite the rain of an earlier hour, the Jeep had its canvas top off.
Annette’s eyes rose to look at her house as she stepped into the Wrangler. She would later remember thinking, as the old building sat in the mist on a gray afternoon, with the foghorn still moaning in the distance, that it looked like the coziest, most tranquil place in the world.
She would always remember that vision and that thought, and, of course, years later from a darker perspective, the irony contained therein.
Chapter Fourteen
The Mid Island Convalescent Home was located on a narrow side road which was one left turn beyond upper Main Street. It was a rambling white wooden house in transmogrified Victorian. Its gables rose above the surrounding foliage. There were three steps upward to the front porch, over which hung a small sign proclaiming the name of the establishment. There were numerous chairs on the porch, scattered in whatever arrangement the elderly residents had last left them. Mid Island had been established in the 1950s as a care center for older island residents, men and women in their seventies and eighties who remained mostly self-sufficient but who also needed a guiding hand. There were never more than seventeen residents, as that was the number of rooms, and half were in the category of Mrs. Helen Ritter, the longtime Nantucket resident and former schoolteacher. That is, while a guardian eye was kept upon her, she was free to come and go as she wished. Within reason.
Tim Brooks parked his car in a semicircular driveway before the front porch. An old man sat near the door, rocking in a cane chair and quietly listening to the Boston Red Sox on a transistor radio. It was a timeless scene from a New England summer. Brooks nodded to him. The old man nodded back. The Sox had the bases filled with one out. But Big Papi lined into a double play—first baseman, unassisted—as Brooks led Annette through the front door.
“What are we doing here?” she asked softly and with some irritation.
“Looking for your prowler,” Brooks answered.
There was a nurse at the front desk, a matronly woman with gray hair, a porcine face and a name tag. Her name was Amanda. She knew Timothy Brooks and greeted him with a smile. The detective asked if Mrs. Ritter could receive two visitors.
“I think she’d be pleased,” Amanda said kindly. “She’s upstairs.”
“Third floor?” Brooks asked.
“Try the lounge,” Amanda said. The third-floor porter could knock on the door to her room if Mrs. Ritter wasn’t out in the common area.
Annette Carlson followed, saying nothing.
There was a modern elevator by the central stairwell. The policeman and the actress took it to the third floor, which was also the top floor at Mid Island. They stepped out into a quiet corridor.
The porter’s name was Mike Silva. He was a moody man in his late twenties who was washing the tiled floor. Silva knew Brooks, and initially glanced at him with disinterest. Then he looked at the policeman more attentively.
“Hey, Brooks,” Silva called. “Anything new on the college girl?”
“It’s still being investigated, Mike,” Brooks answered. “Today I’m looking for Mrs. Ritter.”
Silva nodded in the general direction of the lounge. Again, Annette followed closely. She asked what the porter had meant about a college girl and Brooks told her that there had been a murder on the island the previous Saturday morning.
“A murder? Here?” Annette answered.
“And if the truth were known,” Brooks grumbled, “the real killer is probably long gone. Could be halfway across the United States by now.”
“Still…” Annette said softly. “A murder…”
It was the first time she had heard of the slaying. It shocked her.
Brooks stopped short as they passed a residential doorway. The woman he sought, a white-haired lady who looked to be at least in her late seventies, was stepping out of a friend’s room. She carried an aluminum cane but wasn’t using it. She did, however, appear intent on where she was going.
Brooks stopped, smiled and greeted her.
“Hello, Mrs. Ritter,” he said, speaking gently so as not to surprise her. “May I give you a hand with anything?” She was an aged, frail woman with white hair. At the sound of his voice, she hesitated into a stop. Then her eyes stolidly raised themselves. There was a moment’s hesitation before they found the speaker and locked onto Brooks. There was another painful moment still before a labored flash of recognition.
Then, “Why, Timmy,” she said. “How nice to see you again.” Her eyes went quickly to Annette and back again. “Is this your new wife?”
“No, just a friend,” said Brooks.
“Where is your wife?” she pressed.
“You know where, Mrs. Ritter. I’m not married.”
“A nice boy like you should be,” she said very properly. “Maybe this will be the girl,” she suggested next, nodding toward Annette, approving her at the same time. “Oh, shush,” the old woman said next, more to herself than to her guests. “Why do I say things like that? Rushing things a bit, aren’t I?”
“Just a trifle,” Brooks answered. “Do you have a moment to chat?”
Mrs. Ritter said yes. In fact, she had all afternoon.
Brooks offered her an arm. Mrs. Ritter took it and the policeman guided her. He felt close to her full weight on his wrist. “I just came by to say hello and see how you were doing,” Brooks said.
“Doing?” she answered. “How am I ever doing? One day at a time,” she said. “With God’s will. That’s all.”
Mrs. Ritter’s room was nearby. Brooks pushed the door open to allow her passage. With his head he motioned that Annette was to follow.
The three of them entered a small, densely furnished room. Brooks helped her to a chair. She edged her way off his arm and seated herself. Brooks sat down on the edge of a chaise longue across from her. Annette s
at on the edge of a bed.
From a lifetime, from what she had once had in her own home, the old woman had packed her favorite pieces into a single room. There was a lady’s writing desk, neatly arranged with pens and writing paper and a small dresser that she had frequently told Brooks had once been her mother’s. There was a pink barrel chair and beside it, bearing nothing, was her prized possession, a small square antique tea table with four legs.
This was her “checkerboard table,” as she called it. It had been made from walnut wood in the early nineteenth century by a cabinet maker in Salem and still bore his initials underneath. A painted checkerboard, in sixty-four distinct but faded red and black squares, was clearly delineated on the tabletop. But two of the table’s legs, Brooks noted sadly, were cracked.
“Have they been feeding you all right here?” Tim Brooks asked.
She complained about the food.
“How ’bout your old students?” he asked. “You must have a million of them. Anyone come see you?”
She admitted that several people dropped by each week to say hello. Tim Brooks knew this but listened anyway. “Billy came by last week,” she said. “You know Billy, don’t you? He’s a policeman, too.”
By ‘Billy’ she meant Lt. William Agannis, fifty-nine years old, chief of detectives and still a boy to her. Brooks nodded. “That snotty little Japanese man comes by, too,” she added almost indignantly.
“Who’s that?”
“The minister.”
“Reverend Osaro,” Brooks said, helping her with the name of his basketball opponent. “He’s the pastor of Mrs. Ritter’s church,” Brooks announced for Annette’s edification. “That’s nice that he comes by,” Annette said.
Mrs. Ritter gave a dismal sigh.
“The weather’s been nice recently,” Brooks tried next. “How much have you been getting out?”
“Out?” she said. “Oh, maybe once a week I take a walk. That’s all.”
“With one of the other residents here?” Brooks asked.
“Usually.”
“During the day?”
“During the day.”
“I was wondering, Mrs. Ritter,” Brooks asked gently. “You haven’t been up to any of your tricks, have you?” he asked.
