“I was going to say something,” Joe added.
“I’m sure you were.” Miranda leaned over and kissed his cheek. Then she glanced around. “Beautiful house.”
“It should be,’ Fiona said, “My girls have been cleaning it for two days.”
“He has such beautiful things.”
Fiona shrugged. “He can afford them.”
The music stopped and at that moment someone near the fireplace laughed. Fiona looked over and looked away, but not quickly enough.
“Got to mingle,” Miranda said, and she pulled Joe toward the French doors.
I stared at the fireplace through the shifting jumble of heads and shoulders. I heard the laugh again. It was Nathan Parrish, talking to Lomax. Fiona put her hand on my arm.
It had been more than a week since the auction, but I hadn’t been able to bring it up. I’d only seen Fiona twice, and she had been in such a fine lively mood both times that the whole subject seemed absurd. I knew she’d put me on the defensive, trying to explain what I’d been doing at the VFW Hall in the first place. There could be any number of explanations for the furtive collusion I had glimpsed that afternoon. But more and more, I wanted to hear one of them—preferably one I hadn’t thought of myself. Ideally, one that was true.
The lying bothered me the most. If she had a bidding partner, if that was all it was, why be so devious? The uneasy suspicions kept pouring in and with no way to drain them, they were overflowing like a bathtub, gradually flooding the house. Water damage. You couldn’t fix it, that was what the contractors always said. You had to tear things out and rebuild from scratch.
“I have to talk to you,” I said now.
“Henry, it’s a little crowded in here for—”
“You like the cold. Let’s go outside.”
The music had started up again. I read her lips: “All right.”
We got our coats and stepped out into the bitter night air. There were no other lighted houses visible. It was so isolated, so remote: this patch of gaudy illumination in the middle of the dark Atlantic. I helped her over the low stone wall and we walked to the side of the house. We could still hear the muffled bluegrass music and the rustle of conversation.
“I saw you at Osona’s auction last week,” I said.
“You—? But, how did you—?”
“I drove out to Madaket for lunch. You weren’t there so I tried the next likely place.”
She looked down. “Detective.”
“I saw you…working, with Nathan Parrish.”
“Well, that’s what we do. We work together. He likes collecting and he doesn’t want to be taken advantage of. I love things and I can’t afford to buy them. I was cleaning his house and he came in, very highfalutin and snobbish, so I couldn’t resist telling him that his precious Andrew Sandsbury lightship basket was a fake. I ran into him at an auction a few weeks later, kept him from making a bad mistake over a Colonial hutch. We’ve been working together ever since.”
“So…nothing else is going on? Because it seemed like something else was going on.”
“Henry, he’s married.”
“So was I. So are half the men at this party. It wouldn’t stop most of them. And you happen to look like the younger version of Carla Parrish. The perfect trade-in.”
“He loves his wife.”
“Well, he’s cheating on her with someone. I saw them together.”
“Really? And how did that come to pass?”
“I was driving a late shift on Main Street a few weeks ago. I saw two silhouettes behind the shades in his office. Then they …merged. He had a girl up there and she wasn’t taking dictation.”
“Well, she couldn’t have been too picky.”
“No?”
“He’s a bit old for me, frankly. Besides, he’s fat and he drinks too much.”
“But he’s rich.”
“Well, that might explain it. If you’re that sort of person. I wouldn’t touch him with the wet end of a floor mop, and there’s nothing more to say about it.” Yet she started anyway. “I, I want to—”
“What?”
“I want…I don’t know.”
“Come on, tell me.”
She got hold of herself, and looked me in the eye. “I want to have a nice time tonight. I’ll tell you why I lied. I was buying you a present.”
“I thought you didn’t approve of Christmas. You told me that—”
“We should have it every other year. I know. But anyway…it wasn’t for Christmas. It was just for you. I hate to see you with those awful Bic pens you use. I heard there were going to be some nice fountain pens at the sale, so I made sure to get you one.”
She reached into her pocket and handed me a small, oblong box, wrapped in dark paper.
“Fiona—”
“Open it.”
It was a Montblanc with a gold nib, maybe forty years old.
I tilted it toward the light from the windows. The inlaid nib flashed. “It’s beautiful.”
“You’re a beautiful writer and you should have a nice tool for your work. Poetry’s a gift from God. Which I do appreciate, whatever you may think.”
I laughed. “But unlike you, God leaves the price tags on. Not to mention that ‘some assembly required’ stuff. Thanks a lot, buddy.”
She stared me down, refusing even to smile at my little joke. “You should be thankful for the good things in your life.”
“I know.” I pulled her toward me and kissed her. Cold lips, warm tongues. When we separated I said. “Very thankful.”
“Come on, you great beast, let’s get inside before we freeze to death.”
Chapter Sixteen
Intrigues
Cindy opened the car door and unfolded herself into the bitter wind, grateful that she had decided not to wear heels. Crunching up the driveway they saw Bob Haffner smoking a quick cigarette before going inside
“You never go to parties,” Cindy said.
“Yeah, but this guy is serving food. Real food and lots of it. I talked to the caterer. That’s why I haven’t eaten in two days.” He grinned. “I’m ready. And for whatever I can’t finish…pockets!” He bowed out the big cargo pockets on his overcoat. “You’d be amazed how much I can stuff in these. I’ll be set for a week.”
He stumped on ahead of them and Mike said, “At least he has a plan.”
Inside, they saw Tanya Kriel at the same moment.
She was wearing a low-cut maroon dress, ankle length, slit halfway up the thigh. Her hair was piled up, with tendrils of it brushing her cheekbones. A black velvet choker around her neck gave her the provocative look of a concubine. With a small jolt, Mike realized that he had actually never seen her dressed in anything but her painting clothes. Even in caulk-crusted work pants and an old sweatshirt she set off all the alarms in his limbic system. This was much worse. He had seen her naked and it didn’t matter. He had made love with her and it didn’t matter. He wanted her here and now, in some deserted guest room upstairs, or else in front of everyone, like hormone-deranged high-school kid.
He knew the lust and longing would be all over his face, like barbecue sauce and pork grease after eating a rack of ribs with no napkins. The thought of these two women standing next to each other was unbearable, impossible. It was matter and antimatter: something would explode. Probably him.
“I have to find a bathroom,” he bleated. Cindy stared at him.
“Hi Mike,” Tanya said. “Is this Cindy? Show off those world-famous social graces and introduce us.”
“I’ll be right back,” He pushed his way into the crowd. Cindy watched him go, and then turned to shake Tanya Kriel’s hand.
“I’m on Mike’s crew,” Tanya said.
Cindy smiled at her. “I know.”
And she did. She knew everything now. It was obvious. All the nightmares were re
al. All the gossip was true. It all matched: the long hours at work, the weird new distances at home. And that pile of drop cloths, somewhere in this house, somewhere near where she was standing right now. Tanya was watching her as if she was about to faint. Good call. Would you put a damp washcloth on my forehead, you bitch? Would that make you feel better?
“Excuse me,” she said. “I need a drink.”
As Mike stumbled across the Lomax house Great Room, fleeing from his wife and Tanya Kriel, he side-stepped a waiter with a platter of crab eggrolls, slipped on a slick patch of floor where someone had spilled a drink, and pitched headlong into Preston Lomax himself—host, employer, lifeline.
The older man caught Mike under the armpits, and pushed him upright. “Michael Henderson, the Cutting Edge painter. Just the man I wanted to see.”
Mike stood up straight, intensely relieved that he wasn’t drunk. Utterly insane, yes …but that was easier to hide. He looked up into the man’s eyes, a pale whitish blue like a winter sky with snow massing below the horizon. “Mr. Lomax.”
“One of your people was rude to my son last week.”
“Really?” he asked. “I had no idea.”
“You know nothing about it?”
“No one said anything to me.”
Pat Folger appeared from the general direction of the bar and stepped in between them. Both Mike and Lomax moved back to accommodate him. Folger was as dressed up as he was ever going to get, in a plaid jacket and brown turtleneck sweater. He brandished a highball glass of scotch at Lomax. “Didn’t your son give you the message? I’ll repeat it, then. My painters don’t work for you. They work for me. I’m the general contractor on this job. I don’t go into your office and tell your employees how to comport themselves. So don’t send your son to do it to me.”
“Listen, Folger—”
“No, you listen for a change. You think I need you? Guess again. I have six jobs going on right now and five more lined up on top of them. I barely managed to fit you in. And I’m starting to wonder if it’s worth the trouble.”
“How dare you—?”
“I’ll tell you how. I have as much education as you. I have an MBA from Wharton, buddy. I can speak more languages than you. I’ve read more books than you. And I probably have almost as much money as you do. I could learn your job in six months and do it better than you can. Could learn to be a master carpenter in six months? You think you’re better than me but you’re not. So behave, or you can find someone else for your next project. Because I’ve had it with you, Lomax. You’ve been pissing me off since before we met.”
A small group had gathered to listen, including Nathan and Carla Parrish.
Lomax was too stunned to respond and Mike pushed past the crowd, jaywalking through that brief cognitive gap as if it were a break in the traffic. He made his escape as Folger grunted in disgust and stalked off in the other direction.
Mike started laughing as he ran upstairs. Pat Folger might be a scary guy when he was in your face. But there was nobody better when he was at your back. Mike made it to the second floor and stood still, panting. The party noise was muted here. The band had taken a break. He headed for the guest bathroom. He needed to splash some cold water on his face. Halfway down the hall he heard sounds coming from one of the two master suites: little cries and moans floating like tuneless modern music over the rhythmic thump of the headboard against the wall.
Someone was making love in Lomax’s bed, in the room that was so sacrosanct that only Mike himself was allowed inside to do touch-ups, with surgical gloves on his hands and freshly laundered socks on his feet. The bed was decked with lace-trimmed pillows, and the idea that someone had just scattered them all over the floor he found oddly gratifying. There might even be some stains on those eight hundred dollar Pratesi sheets before the night was over.
He moved closer to the door to hear the high thin nasal voice coming from inside. He knew it from the endless punch lists (“This is appalling! Look at this! There’s paint all over this doorknob, Mike! That’s an antique solid brass doorknob! Don’t just nod at me! Tell me how you’re going to fix this! Show me I was right to trust you with my home.”). Now that voice was saying, “Yes, yes, yes. Yes! Yes!”
He was sure it was her, though “Yes” was one word she had never spoken in his presence. She was in the bedroom and her husband was downstairs. So who—?
“Kevin! Yes, Kevin! Oh, God, Kevin! That’s so good! Yes! Harder!”
Mike stepped closer. Was it possible? The poetic justice of catching Kevin Sloane exactly as Kevin had caught him was too good to be true. It was also appalling, as Diana might say herself. And hilarious.
Leaning into the door casing, straining to catch a sound that would identify his nemesis, he didn’t hear the footsteps behind him. The gentle hand on his shoulder banged through his nervous system like a blow. He spun around, sure it was Lomax. He had no excuse or explanation for his presence here, eavesdropping on this grotesque infidelity. His mind was a blank.
But it wasn’t Preston Lomax. It was the daughter, Kathleen.
“Kevin is in there with someone, isn’t he?”
“What?”
“He thinks I’m still off-island.”
“I don’t know—he—you…it’s not—you can’t—” Mike pulled himself together. “Listen, come with me, we have to get out of here.”
He took her arm but she shook it off.
“He’s with someone.” Before he could stop her she side-stepped him and lunged through the door.
“Kevin? Kevin, Jesus, what are you—”
She gasped like she was choking on food.
“Oh, my God. Mom. Oh my God. I can’t—Oh God. Oh God.”
She bolted past Mike, almost knocking him over and ran down the corridor for the stairs. Mike stepped into the room, a flash like the first few moments after a car crash: everyone checking to make sure they were intact, ears ringing and nervous systems jangling. The silence was a vacuum. It sucked everything into it. Kevin and Mrs. Lomax sat upright in bed, the covers pulled to their necks. They had the same wild-eyed animal stillness. Terror twins, identical despite the age difference.
Mike knew exactly how they felt.
Mrs. Lomax spoke first, with the calm and perfect diction of catastrophe.
“I don’t think any of us should talk about this. To anyone. Ever.”
“Good idea,” said Kevin.
“That’s fine with me,” Mike said to her. Then he turned to Kevin. “You’re fired. Don’t let me catch you on the job again. I’ll mail you your last check.”
“Hey, wait a second! You can’t—”
“Kevin. Think about your situation. Then decide.”
He left the room and shut the door behind him.
Chapter Seventeen
Tactical Delay
In the great room downstairs, Nathan Parrish and his wife Carla had joined Preston Lomax amid a group of captivated women at the foot of the stairs. Lomax had recovered nicely from his brief contretemps with Pat Folger. He was as resilient as a rubber ball. Carla looked him over now. She was amused at that his efforts to look like an old time Nantucketer, falling short in ways only an old time Nantucketer would notice. His loafers weren’t topsiders, his blue blazer was too light a shade of blue, and his “Nantucket Red” pants were too red. The dusty pink faded with repeated washings. His were obviously just off the shelf. Lomax was a shade off, and he always would be.
But she had to admit he sounded impressive, telling his guests the story of his most recent indulgence: an indoor red-clay tennis court.
“It takes up most of the basement in the Virginia house,” he was saying. “I thought there’d be drainage problems. You have to water that surface daily. But the engineers did a great job. I wish they’d consulted with the idiots who built the roads in this town! Every time it drizzles half the island gets fl
ooded.”
The women laughed nervously.
Carla was standing next to the newel post. “Preston,” she said, “what happened to your mortgage button?”
Mortgage buttons were small ivory medallions that Nantucket homeowners traditionally placed at the top of the ground floor newel post when the mortgage was paid off and they finally owned their house. Nathan and Carla had been at the auction where Lomax overpaid for a set of antique buttons. He made quite a fuss about the little ivory coin he chose to display, which was ironic since he had built the house and never had to struggle with monthly payments. The button didn’t represent a hard-won victory over penury and foreclosure; it was merely another bogus token of insider status, like the professionally rebuilt 1955 Chevrolet Bel Air convertible with two-tone coral-and-gray exterior and powerglide transmission that he had bought off the Internet so he could drive an antique car in the island’s Daffodil Day parade.
“I’ll tell you what I did with that button, Carla,” he was saying now. “I gave it to David Lazarus to scrimshaw. He’s etching my family crest onto it. Then it really makes a statement. It will be my flag in the dirt here.”
Parrish laughed. “Of all the things in the world to get corny about—you chose your ancestors and real estate. This may be the place for you after all.”
“There’s only one small problem,” Carla said. “The scrimshaw will ruin the button’s authenticity. You’ll be branding it like a cow. This belongs to Preston Lomax. It’s unbearably gauche. But it’s kind of perfect, too. It could be the dust jacket illustration for a book about everything that’s gone wrong with Nantucket.”
Lomax laughed. “Feel free to borrow the button if you ever write the book.”
Parrish stepped between Lomax and his wife, as if to physically cut the current of jocular animosity running between them. He patted the bigger man’s shoulder. “I like the sense I get from it. I like the idea of you sticking around for a while. We have a lot of branding and ruining to do together and I’m looking forward to every minute of it.” He lifted his glass of wine in a toast. Carla sneered and drifted away.
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