Two hundred yards ahead, she saw a stretch of yellow crime-scene tape fluttering in the breeze. Without thinking, she drove toward the long concrete pier that jutted out into the bay.
Riley parked and got out of the cart. Four small orange cones were arranged in a rectangle on the sidewalk. She stood, her arms folded tightly across her chest, and stared down at the concrete.
Was this where it happened? Did Wendell stand in this spot, just three short nights ago? Who was with him? A stranger? The sheriff said he’d been struck hard, in the back of the head. Had Wendell known he was in danger? Was there an argument? Who had done this?
Belle Isle’s summer season was in full swing. Every mooring on the dock had a boat tied up. All but one. Was this where Wendell had arrived at Belle Isle? Why? What was he doing here?
An icy chill ran down her spine, and she stumbled, nearly knocked down, again, by the finality of this moment.
One of the rubber cones had fallen on its side. With her toe, she edged it back to an upright position. This was her reality. Wendell was really and truly gone. Their daughter needed to know why. And Riley needed the truth just as much as Maggy.
Riley gazed down into the inky waters of the bay. Waves splashed at the concrete seawall, washing up random flotsam: bits of marsh grass, cigarette butts, a faded plastic Dr Pepper bottle, and a snarl of monofilament fishing line with a red-and-white plastic bobber attached. Unbidden, a ghostly image of a body, tangled in that same monofilament, flashed in her imagination. She walked back to the golf cart.
* * *
Billy Nolan stared at the computer screen. He looked away, and then back again, but the red blinking numbers hadn’t changed. Which wasn’t really news. They hadn’t changed in the last forty-eight hours either, and God knows he’d checked repeatedly, hoping against hope that maybe the bank had discovered an error. Maybe, he thought, trust accounts were like an old pair of jeans. Sometimes you put them on after not wearing them for months, and money magically appeared in your pocket.
Or not. He desperately needed some magic right now.
He fixed himself another cocktail and wandered over to the piano. Music had been his friend, his only friend, for so many years before he and Scott had connected. His fingers trailed across the keys, and he played a few notes, but they were jarring, discordant. Like his life.
God damn Wendell Griggs. Damn him and his crazy schemes. He’d never really trusted his brother-in-law, but when Wendell came to him with that plan of his, and the veiled threats, Billy told himself that Wendell would make them all rich. And not just Belle Isle rich, which everybody on the island mistakenly assumed the Nolans were, but filthy, stinking, Hamptons rich. Palm Beach rich.
The ugly truth of it was, Billy wanted to be richer than W.R. had ever thought possible. The old man was dead, so he wouldn’t know, but everybody else would know. Scott would know. And that would be enough, wouldn’t it?
Billy drained the highball glass, stared out the window, and was surprised to see a pair of headlights rounding the driveway at the Shutters. He snapped off the lamp beside the piano to enable a better view. The cart rolled to a stop beneath the garage lights, and he saw Riley climb out. It was nearly three in the morning. What was his big sister up to?
19
The list of Memorial Day activities in The Belle Isle Bulletin—helpfully forwarded to him by his mother—was long and exhausting. Farmers market on the village green! Cookout at the pool! Tennis tournament. Kiddie Karnival. Softball. Potato sack races! Shrimp boil on the beach.
“You should go!” Annie had e-mailed. “You’re turning into a hermit.”
“Two words,” Nate muttered, as he loaded his gear into the cart. “Hell. No.”
He glanced up at the bright, cloudless sky. A perfect day for fishing, which was why he’d called ahead to the marina and asked to have the boat gassed up and waiting at the dock.
Now, as he stowed his rods, tackle, and cooler in the twenty-two-foot Pathfinder, he realized he’d underestimated the amount of traffic that would be on the water on this first big holiday of the summer. There were boats everywhere. He shrugged. People and boats meant business. For the Mercantile and the ferry. And, like it or not, he was in business on this island.
At the slip next to his, a horde of kids piled onto a sleek twenty-eight-foot Cobalt ski boat. They were young, in their early teens, and noisy. Even over the roar of the Cobalt’s motor he could hear earsplitting hardcore rap from the radio, and the teens themselves were laughing and goofing around. He recognized the boat’s redheaded “captain” as the oldest of the Billingsley litter. The same kid whose phone he had temporarily taken. Shane? Kid was a punk.
He busied himself dumping the shrimp into the live well. Every time he looked up, another kid was jumping onto the Billingsley boat. Now there were at least ten passengers, which meant the boat was seriously, and illegally, overloaded. Not his problem. With any luck, either the Baldwin County sheriff’s marine patrol or the Coast Guard would intercept the ship of fools before anybody got hurt.
Nate started the runabout’s twin Mercs and, looking over his shoulder, began slowly backing away from his berth. As he inched past the Billingsley boat he noticed for the first time that Riley Griggs’s daughter, Maggy, was perched on the stern. She was clad in a bright pink bikini and squeezed in alongside three similarly dressed young girls. No sign of Riley, or any other adult in the vicinity.
He wondered, briefly, if Maggy’s mother knew or approved of this outing, and then dismissed the thought. Also not his problem.
Suddenly, and without warning, the Billingsley kid jammed his boat into reverse and shot backward away from his adjoining berth, only inches away from Nate’s, sending a huge jet of water splashing over his bow.
“Hey! Watch it, goddamn it!” Nate shouted.
“Sorry. My bad!” the redhead called back. The girls on the boat screamed in mock terror, and a moment later the kid was roaring away at full throttle. In a no-wake zone.
“Slow down!” Nate hollered, but the kid and the boat were long gone. He watched in disgust as the ski boat raced across the bay. “Weekenders,” he muttered. As soon as the word came out of his mouth, he realized he sounded exactly like his old man.
Captain Joe was always polite, almost deferential to Belle Isle’s part-time residents—at least in public. “These people pay our bills,” he’d say, when Nate complained about the rich, entitled assholes who treated his father—and by extension—the rest of the Milas family, like little more than indentured servants.
If they called the ferry office and demanded that Joe hold the boat because somebody in the family was running late, Joe would calmly point out that a schedule was a schedule. If a passenger bitched at him about weak coffee from the concession stand or a clumsy deckhand, the old man would listen and nod—maybe even apologize for his employee’s supposed transgression.
At home it was a different matter. After a particularly bad day at work, kindly Captain Joe would rage about the snooty wives, pampered kids, and self-important “executives” with second homes on Belle Isle. “Weekenders,” Joe would snarl. “A giant pain in the ass, every single one of ’em.”
Joe Milas was proud of his own business, proud that he’d instilled an early work ethic in his only child, but he’d always been insistent that Nate would go to college and get a real education—“Just in case you decide running a damn boat from point A to point B all day every day isn’t what you want out of life.”
Well, Nate had gotten a degree in finance, started a business from scratch, watched it go bust, and then started another business—an app called Cribb. He’d gotten rich and then gotten the shaft—first from his business partner/best friend Matt, and then from his best girl, Cassie. And now he’d ended up right back here in Belle Isle and was temporarily making a living running that same damn boat back and forth across the bay—six times a day.
But today was his day off, and he intended to spend it as far away from any and all wee
kenders as possible. He steered the Pathfinder toward a favorite fishing spot, a narrow, tree-lined spit of an island local fishermen referred to as “the spoon” because of its shape. Ten minutes later he’d anchored just off the back side of the spoon’s tip at the mouth of a narrow tidal creek. Within five minutes he’d hooked a good-size flounder in the sandy shallows. His rod tip bent nearly double as he carefully reeled the fish toward the boat. He could see the flounder’s broad, pancake shape shimmering just below the water’s surface, and he picked up a long-handled net to assist in boating the fish.
Just as he was about to slide the net beneath the fish, he heard the roar of a fast-approaching boat. The Pathfinder rocked violently and his feet slipped out from under him and he landed flat on his ass on the bottom of the boat. Somehow, he managed not to drop the rod.
“Son of a bitch,” he growled, pulling himself up to a standing position. He looked down at the water’s surface, but the slack in his fishing line told him he’d lost the fish.
Nate glanced up in time to see the speedboat zoom away.
He had half a mind to go after the little punks, or maybe call the local marine patrol to alert them to the kids’ reckless behavior.
Nah, he thought. He reached into the live well, drew out a shrimp, and baited his hook again. If there was one flounder here, there would be more. Let the punk kid be somebody else’s problem. He had fish to catch.
* * *
And the fishing was good. He settled into the rhythm of casting and retrieving, forgetting about the stresses and annoyances of running a business and dealing with the public. A gentle breeze kept the heat from becoming oppressive. The sun beat down on his shoulders, which eventually unknotted and relaxed. Around noon, he ate the ham sandwich he’d picked up at the Mercantile, and washed it down with a cold beer from his cooler.
By the time the tide slacked he’d caught six keeper trout and a flounder, and it was nearing two. Time to head for the dock.
Nate caught himself smiling and humming as he raised anchor. Humming, for Christ’s sake. Hermits didn’t hum. Still. A bad day on the water beat the hell out of the best day spent in his windowless “executive suite” back at Cribb’s offices in California.
He idled the skiff’s motor and allowed the outgoing tide to ride him out of the shallow water.
When he was satisfied it was safe, he was about to start the engine when he heard it. A voice, faint, echoing over the bay’s now mirror-calm surface.
“Help! Anybody? Help!” It seemed to be coming from the front side of the spoon. “Hey! We need help!”
* * *
He spotted it as soon as he rounded the tip of the spoon—the Cobalt—beached high and dry on the sandbar. Three of the kids had climbed out of the boat and were sitting glumly on the sand, while the Billingsley kid, his red hair gleaming in the unrelenting sun, stood at the stern, madly waving his arms. The girls lounged on the bow of the boat, seemingly unconcerned about their misfortune.
Nate allowed himself a small smirk of satisfaction. Served the little pissant right. Let him stay out here for another couple of hours, and maybe he’d learn a lesson or two about courtesy and safety on the water.
But then he spotted the forlorn silhouette of a slender girl, apart from the others, hunched over, head bent, her arms tucked around knees drawn close to her chest.
“Shit,” he muttered. It was Riley’s daughter, Maggy.
The water near the sandbar was too shallow to allow him to get much closer than a hundred yards away.
“Hey, man,” the kid yelled. “We’re stuck.”
“I see that. Looks like you’re beached pretty solid there.”
“Yeah. They oughta have a marker out here or something. Now my prop’s all screwed up. How about a tow back to the marina?”
It took a supreme effort on Nate’s part not to laugh at the kid’s audacity.
He shook his head. “Can’t do it. Your boat’s a good six feet longer than mine, and you’re overloaded as it is.”
The kid’s face flushed red in anger. “So what the hell am I supposed to do now?”
Nate shrugged. “Call a marine tow service?”
“Are you kidding me? They probably charge. Like, a lot. Anyway, my phone’s dead.”
Nate held up his own phone. “I could call for you.”
The kid appeared to be considering that option.
“I could call the Coast Guard or the marine patrol,” Nate offered. “But when they show up, they’re gonna do a safety inspection and they’re gonna count how many life jackets you have on board.”
“I got enough.”
“I doubt that,” Nate said. “I count ten of you. Show me ten life jackets.”
“What, if I don’t have enough, you’re gonna narc me out?”
“Absolutely,” Nate said, his expression grim. He gestured toward the lone figure sitting in the bow.
“Hey, Maggy—how about I give you a lift back to the marina?”
She lifted her head and glared at him. Her shoulders and arms and legs were burnt bright red, but her face looked oddly ashen.
“No.”
“I think you probably need to come with me,” he said, trying to keep his tone light. He knew the girl had diabetes, and wondered how long it had been since she’d had anything to eat or drink. “It’s a busy holiday weekend. Even after I call the marine patrol, it could be awhile before they can send somebody out to give you guys a tow.”
Her eyes widened, but she shook her head. “No way. I’ll wait here.”
“I don’t think so,” Nate said. “Come on. Let’s go.”
“You’re not in charge of me!”
“That’s true. But if you don’t start wading out here to me in one minute, I’m gonna swim in there and drag you back to my boat myself. And then things are gonna start getting ugly.”
One of the other girls on the boat approached, touched her friend’s shoulder, and said something Nate couldn’t hear. Maggy shook her head, but the girl leaned in closer.
“Go on,” the Billingsley kid yelled, sounding annoyed. “Let him give you a ride. I don’t want you to pass out or puke on my boat or something.”
Reluctantly, Maggy climbed slowly down off the boat, using the ruined propeller as a stepladder. A moment later, she was paddling toward Nate’s skiff, and a moment after that, he leaned over and hauled her effortlessly over the side.
She flopped onto the deck and looked up at him with murder in her eyes.
“Happy now? Since you ruined my life?”
“Delirious,” Nate said. He touched her cheek, which felt surprisingly clammy. “When was the last time you ate?”
“None of your business.”
“Have you checked your blood sugar or taken any insulin?”
She clamped her lips together tightly and turned her back to him. He could see her narrow shoulders were trembling.
“Hey!” Nate grasped her by her shoulders and turned her back around. “I’m not playing games here, Maggy.”
“I left my insulin kit on the dock,” she finally admitted. “I had a Coke and some chips at the marina.”
“That was hours ago.” He reached into the cooler and found another ham sandwich. He thrust it at her. “Here. Eat this.”
Her eyes flared. “Ham? Gross.”
“Eat it anyway.”
She peeled back the wax paper wrapping on the sandwich and took a bite. And then another bite. And another.
He handed her a cold bottle of water. “You need to drink something. I think you look dehydrated.”
The fight had suddenly gone out of her. She took the bottle and swigged half of it down.
Nate found a clean T-shirt in the locker under his console and flipped it to her. “Here. Put that on. You’re shaking. And you’re burned to a crisp. Have you ever heard of a thing called sunblock?”
“Have you ever heard of minding your own business?”
“Look. I don’t know that much about diabetes. Are you okay? Do I
need to call and have an ambulance meet us at the dock? And don’t bullshit me. Your mom already lost your dad this week. How do you think she’d feel if you go into a coma or something?”
Maggy shrugged. “You have any orange juice?”
“I’ve got an orange.” He got it out of the cooler, took his fishing knife, wiped it off on the hem of his shirt, and cut it in half.
She immediately sank her teeth into the bright orange flesh and began sucking the juice noisily.
“Better?”
She nodded.
“Then let’s go home.”
20
When the doorbell rang, Riley ignored it. She was sick of casseroles and condolences. But then it rang again. And again. If the visitor was one of Evelyn’s friends, their next stop would be the back door, and there would be hell to pay.
Better to get it over with and face the music. She looked like crap, she knew, with wet hair, no makeup, and a faded tank top worn braless over baggy shorts she’d found in the bottom drawer of the dresser in her old room. Maybe, she thought glumly, her appearance would frighten away whoever was now banging insistently on the front door.
“Coming!” she bellowed, walking quickly down the hall. She opened the front door to find the person she least wanted to see on the porch of Shutters today.
Nate Milas. He was sunburnt and windblown, and he wasn’t alone. Maggy stood beside him, also sunburnt with an unusually meek expression on her face. She was wearing an oversize shirt that definitely didn’t belong to her.
“Hi,” she said, looking from Nate to her daughter. “What’s up?”
Nate had a hand clamped firmly on Maggy’s shoulder. “I just dropped by to return some property of yours.”
“Maggy?” She glanced at her daughter, who was busily studying her fingernails. “Why would she need returning?” She hooked a finger under her daughter’s chin. “I thought you were still asleep upstairs.”
“Uh, no,” Maggy said, turning on the attitude.
The Weekenders Page 14
