The Ice Cradle

by Mary Ann Winkowski

  “There are some amazing photographs,” I said. “If they were properly matted and framed, they’d make a terrific exhibit. And there are other ways to bring parts of the story to life: audio recordings, other types of installations. But that would require a dedicated space.”

  “And what would that cost?”

  “I have no idea. There seems to be room in the building, but the space would have to be renovated.”

  “And how long would that take?”

  “I really don’t know. I could talk to Caleb.”

  “Great,” said the senator, interrupting me. “Get back to me as soon as possible.”

  “All right,” I said meekly, and then he was gone.

  Lauren had been right about one thing: Rawlings had some kind of agenda, though I wasn’t quite sure what it was. And now it appeared she was going to be right a second time: the senator was getting ready to make a speech. I was sipping my melon martini when a young guy who looked like he might be an aide-de-camp came into the dining room and attempted to usher everyone into the opposite space.

  I had every intention of following him, but Aitana had just appeared at the door to the pantry and was waving me over with a frantic gesture.

  “I’ll be right there,” I said to the aide.

  “Everything’s great!” I told Aitana.

  “Thanks,” she answered distractedly. “But listen! The woman in the car …”

  “What car?”

  “The one that almost hit me! I think she’s here!”

  “I thought you didn’t see them.”

  “So did I! But I guess I saw more than I thought. I couldn’t have described her face to the police, but I swear it’s her.”

  I glanced across the foyer, where people were settling in, all facing the back of the house, where Rawlings was presumably standing. I heard him say something I couldn’t make out, and the guests erupted in polite laughter.

  “What should we do?” I asked.

  “I’m stuck back here. But maybe you could talk to her—find out where she’s staying, I don’t know. If we could find the car, that would be a start.”

  I nodded. “What does she look like?”

  “She’s young. Early twenties. She’s wearing a red jacket and a denim skirt. Blond hair.”

  “I’ll see if I can find her,” I said.

  Aitana nodded and closed the door. I made my way across the foyer and into the living room, where I found a place at the very back of the crowd. I was actually able to sit on the windowsill, so deep were the walnut-framed enclosures into which the picture windows were set. I scanned the backs of the guests and found her almost immediately: the jacket wasn’t just red, it was bright red, almost fluorescent, the only red jacket in the crowd. I would have to wait until the speech was over, though, before I could try to talk to her.

  Caleb turned out to be right about the reason for the party. Rawlings warmed up his neighbors and guests with amiable chitchat featuring tales of local characters, apparently all present, before moving on to the substance of his presentation: the results of an environmental impact study on the effects of the proposed wind turbine installation. At this point the lights were dimmed, and slides began to flash across a screen set up to the senator’s left.

  For the next half hour, we heard ominous “proof” that construction of the windmills would be disastrous to just about everything that flew in the air, swam in the ocean, and nested in the dunes. I found this really annoying. You don’t invite people to a party and then hold them hostage while you hammer home some point, forcing them to stand there and pretend to be interested when they really want to be eating hors d’oeuvres and listening to jazz. Then again, I hadn’t been to any parties given by senators. Maybe that was exactly what they did.

  At the point at which I tuned back in, Rawlings was intoning the first of a series of chilling predictions. The 440-foot windmills would kill, harm, and “harass” dolphins, seals, and whales. They’d slice six million migratory birds into shreds, especially during stretches of bad weather, when birds abandoned their customary “Atlantic flyways” and flew at lower altitudes. The building of the electrical service platform was going to destroy all kinds of habitats, and tens of thousands of gallons of transformer oil would always be in danger of spilling into the ocean just off the island’s shores. At this point, a pathetic image of a tiny, oil-soaked duckling appeared on the screen.

  And that was just the tip of the iceberg. Gray harbor seals would lose their “pupping sites.” Terns, sea ducks, and piping plovers would be driven right out of their nesting grounds. Leatherback, green, and loggerhead turtles would be in the market for new digs. Boats and ferries, search-and-rescue efforts, and even airplanes would be “endangered” by the wind farm. Airplanes? I thought. Couldn’t they just plan to fly around the 440-foot windmills? Last but not least, the wind turbines would have a deleterious and permanent effect on “beloved historic vistas.”

  Bingo, I thought. Now we’re getting somewhere.

  Because it hadn’t escaped my notice that the Rawlings manse looked directly out onto the area of the sound where the Larchmont went down. Caleb had confirmed this earlier in the evening, pointing off into the distance when he and Sally and I rounded the edge of the point on which the senator had built his home. But if that was where the Larchmont had gone down, it was also the very spot where the windmills would go up. Forty of them, smack-dab in the center of the senator’s “vista.”

  Now, it’s not that I don’t care about dolphins and whales. Of course I do—everyone does. The thought of harbor seals losing their “pupping sites” is heartbreaking. But so are the prospects of the oceans warming and whole species disappearing, not to mention endless cycles of wars fought over access to fossil fuels.

  And I couldn’t help wondering whether all these predictions were actually true, or completely true. Who had done this study? An impartial third party with rigorous scientific standards and no vested interest in the outcome? Or an allegedly progressive, “green” front of some kind, funded behind the scenes by people who claimed to be all about protecting birds and fish, but who were really looking out for their property values and ocean views.

  I’d have loved to have asked right then and there, when the lights came back on, who had underwritten the study, but Rawlings’s self-important aide-de-camp was holding a stack of brochures and starting to pass them out to the people who were leaving. These would certainly identify the organization behind the study, so I decided to keep my mouth shut, snag a brochure on my way out, and do a little snooping on the QT.

  As the senator was surrounded by neighbors with questions, I stepped back into the hall. Sally came into view, and just behind her was the girl in red; and she really was just a girl—no more than nineteen or twenty. As she made her way through the room full of guests, I tried to come up with a conversation opener. I had to hurry, though, because she was walking right toward me.

  “I love your jacket,” I said.

  She stopped short and looked at me. “Thanks.”

  “It’s a great color,” I added. And it was. Maybe not for a jacket, but then again, maybe she was a performance artist from Brooklyn.

  “I got it in Boston.” She smiled slightly. “At the Salvation Army.”

  “You’re kidding!”

  She shook her head. “The one on Berkeley Street.”

  “Near the Mass. Pike there?” I asked.

  She nodded. “You know it?”

  “I know where it is. I live in Cambridge. Anza O’Malley.” I extended my hand and she shook it. Hers was cold and bony and I noticed deep, dark roots growing in beneath the blond curls that nestled inside her collar like baby birds.

  “Elsa Corbett.”

  “Do you live near Boston?” I asked.

  “Kind of,” she answered evasively. I wondered whether she kind of lived there, or if where she lived was kind of near Boston. But she didn’t seem inclined to get chatty. She looked past my shoulder, as though scanni
ng the crowd for a face.

  “Are you here on vacation?” I prodded.

  She met my gaze again and took in a breath, as though she was about to say something, but then she didn’t. She had apparently caught the eye of a guy across the room, whom I judged to be in his mid-thirties. He was wearing a retro golf jacket and a shirt that struck me as kind of dorky. But I think that dorky might be the new cool, now that I’ve gotten rid of all the clothes that might have qualified. Whatever fashion boat there is to miss, I somehow manage to miss it.

  “I’m here for a couple of days,” she answered, before whispering a breathy “Excuse me” and slipping through the guests to join up with the guy in the golf jacket.

  I couldn’t let her get away. I hoped that they had walked to the party and not driven, because I was just going to have to follow them.

  Chapter Fifteen

  I ALSO HOPED THEY weren’t going too far, because I didn’t have a lot of time. I’d given Caleb and Sally the slip by ducking out through the Rawlingses’ back door, but the fact remained that Henry was at their house, waiting to be picked up. I could plausibly claim that I’d thought they had left, that we’d somehow missed each other in the crush to claim coats and say our good-byes, but I had to get back to the Wilders’ at about the same time they did. I didn’t want to take advantage of their babysitting largesse or raise any eyebrows about my whereabouts.

  The night was chilly, and a few stars were beginning to appear. A low, hazy web stretched like a membrane between sea and sky, and veins of cloud glowed faintly blue, like capillaries on the eyelids of a sleeping infant. It was lucky for me that most people had walked to the party, so the road was thronged with dozens of departing guests. In the fading light, the saucy red of Elsa’s jacket waxed and waned in reflected radiance created by widely spaced streetlights.

  Most of the walkers peeled off to the right, where the point jutted out from the mainland, but there were plenty of people who turned to the left, as Elsa and her boyfriend did. I assumed he was her boyfriend. They held hands as they walked, though there wasn’t much chatting or laughing, especially for a boyfriend and girlfriend who had just been to a cocktail party. Their pace was purposeful and deliberate. I was relieved when they took a right turn onto an unpaved road marked Ballard’s Way. From exploring the island on Saturday with Henry, I knew that this street was only a few houses long.

  A low stand of pines lined the road on my right and ended at a small cottage that looked deserted. Its shutters had been bolted closed, and a dilapidated brown sedan was on blocks in the driveway. Perfect, I thought: I could cut through here without arousing suspicion. But I was just past the trees when I was stopped in my tracks by one of the largest, and most outraged, dogs I had ever seen.

  I caught my breath, stopped short, and tried to remain completely motionless. I say dog, but the blood that ran through this collarless creature’s veins could easily have been that of a wolf. He stood in my path about ten feet away, his eyes glittering, his head slung low between powerful shoulders, his gray lips pulled back in a ferocious snarl, the hackles on his back in full intimidation mode.

  His low, throaty rumble was broken only when he stopped to draw a breath. I didn’t dare look him in the eye, because I couldn’t remember if that was what you were supposed to do or never supposed to do. Suddenly, his growling stopped. The dog looked up, and everything about his demeanor changed before my eyes: his shoulders relaxed and he began to make little submissive circles, glancing warily up to the left of me. Only when this had gone on for a while did I dare to glance around myself.

  Just behind me stood Baden.

  “Thank God!” I whispered.

  Baden remained silent but began to advance on the animal. The dog paused briefly, but when Baden made a wild run at him, he turned tail and raced away.

  My hands were trembling as I took the first deep breath I had taken in a while. I turned to Baden.

  “Thank you,” I said. “You might have saved my life.”

  “You might be right.”

  I don’t know for sure if animals can actually see ghosts, but I absolutely know that they can sense them. They may feel a change of energy in the air, sense an unsettling aura of heat or cold, or even hear sounds that are out of the range of human hearing, like the sounds produced by dog whistles. I suppose it’s like the changes you feel on a sultry summer afternoon, when you can smell approaching rain in the air.

  “Were you following me?” I asked.

  Baden gave me a dismissive look, then turned back to the path. I’d probably missed my chance to learn where Elsa and her friend were staying, and there was no way I was going to leave Baden’s side, not with that creature on the loose. I’d telephone Aitana later tonight. Maybe we could come back in the morning.

  Not one to let an awkward situation pass without trying to turn it to his advantage, Baden asked, “Why would I be following you?”

  “It’s a fairly unlikely place to run into someone.”

  “One could say the same to you.”

  Baden fell into step beside me as we walked back to the main road. Though I was dying to ask him what his reason had been, I remained quiet as an older couple approached us on the road, leisurely making their way home from the party. I didn’t want to seem like a psychotic woman, talking animatedly to no one in particular on a dark and lonely street. I smiled and nodded when the man said, “Evening.” Baden kept pace beside me.

  “I’m here on account of your family,” I whispered. “Lauren and Mark need my help. And they need yours.” The time had come for Baden to declare himself. His own personal history and desires aside, he seemed to really care about Lauren and Mark. But he had to do more than care. He had to jump in and help.

  Suddenly, his expression softened. He squared his shoulders and addressed me, for the first time, with feeling and concern in his voice. “For them,” he said, “I will do anything.”

  “Really?” I couldn’t quite believe it. Could it actually be this easy?

  Baden nodded. “Tell me what you require of me. Tell me how I may help.”

  “I’m not really sure,” I said. “I need your help even to figure that out.”

  “Then you have it,” he said.

  “Okay, then maybe we could begin by being honest with each other. I’ll tell you why I was here if you tell me.”

  He gave a slight nod.

  “Do you know who Aitana is?” I began. “Bert’s sister? She runs a catering company.”

  “I do.”

  “Okay, well, the night of the fire, she was working really late getting the food ready for the party at Senator Rawlings’s house. That’s where I was tonight.”

  “Go on.”

  “And when she was driving back home from the place where she cooks, a car practically ran her off the road. It was right around the time that the fire broke out, so we think the two might be related. Tonight, at the party, Aitana saw someone who she believes was in the car. Aitana was stuck in the kitchen, so I followed the woman and her boyfriend here. They turned off onto Ballard’s Way.”

  “You intended to confront her? That might have been dangerous. Like the dog.” He smiled.

  I could hardly believe it. Humor without bite? Maybe we were getting somewhere.

  “The car was green or gray, a small wagon. I thought if I could find out where she was staying …”

  “Perhaps you may locate the car. But you still may not know if the two are related.”

  “No. But if this woman and her boyfriend have the right kind of car, it might contain traces of accelerant.”

  “This is true,” he said.

  “She isn’t from the island, as far as I know. She said she’s only here for a few days. But I can’t help wondering what she was doing at the party.”

  “Was she alone?”

  I shook my head. “She was with a man. They weren’t very dressed up and I didn’t see them talking to anyone else—they didn’t seem to know anyone else. So how did they get
onto the senator’s guest list?”

  “There is no way to know. Perhaps the senator knows her family, or the young man’s. Does the senator have children?”

  “I don’t know,” I answered.

  “What is his age?”

  “Close to sixty, I’d say.”

  “They may be friends of his children,” Baden suggested.

  “I suppose.”

  “But you believe they are staying back there.” Baden indicated the road back to our left, where I had seen Elsa and the man turn in.

  I nodded. “Do you know who owns those houses?”

  “I do not. My only knowledge is of the next street, where we met.” He wore a nervous look, as though fearing he had opened the door to further questions.

  He was right. I stopped and looked at him. I kept looking at him. I didn’t intend to stop looking until he told me more about himself.

  “You knew someone who lived on that street,” I guessed.

  He nodded.

  I guessed again. “At the time your brother lived here.”

  He looked away and then let out the most surprising and pitiful moan. He covered his face with his hands and his shoulders began to shake.

  Now that was a secret he’d been keeping for a very long time.

  “A woman,” I guessed.

  He nodded almost imperceptibly.

  “Who was—not your wife,” I said quietly.

  He took his hands away from his eyes, and what I saw was both grief and relief. Someone finally knew. The Catholic Church has gotten a lot of things wrong, grandly and tragically wrong, but it sure has an appreciation for the relief that follows confession.

  It would have been cruel to press him for details. I knew enough, or at least I could imagine enough. He’d probably had an affair with a woman who lived here, and when the Larchmont went down, he found his spirit marooned on the very island where his lover still lived. Perhaps this was why he didn’t cross over when he could, and for all I knew, Baden spent the rest of his lover’s life watching her and loving her and being by her side. It might have been enough for him, even if she didn’t know he was there.