He returned to his towels on the soft sand with Heather’s teddy beside him. The nearby boom boxes were annoying, and it was irritating to have a wet dog shake itself dry right next to him, which soon happened. Yet, as he stretched out his legs, and drew his hands up under his head, and felt the sun beat down on him, he recalled the long games of Frisbee, the kite-flying and sandcastle-making from his own childhood vacations here, invariably delicious breaks from the lonesome monotony of home, and he realized just how pleasant it could be to pass a summer day at the beach. He could see why his grandparents had bought the house, and why the family had kept it all these years. He might try to come back here himself one summer. With Marj, perhaps, now that they seemed to be out of jobs. Maybe he’d even figure out a way to bring Heather along.
Down by the water’s edge, Heather and Marj flitted about like a couple of butterflies—Marj in her pink and red, Heather in her shiny blue suit. Both of them flapped their arms girlishly as they chased after the retreating water, then, with nearly identical squeals, scurried back ahead of the onrushing waves. They seemed to be enjoying each other, Rollins was glad to see. He glanced up once or twice. But the sun’s warmth was soothing, and the sea sounds were oddly restful, once you ignored the shouts of all the other sunbathers. Rollins rolled up his sleeves, and pulled his pant legs up a little more, and lay back again to let the warm summer air lull him. The sky was a deep blue, with wispy clouds sailing across it. He mused sleepily about the three of them. Were they a kind of family? He felt himself smile at the thought.
He must have dozed off, because the next thing he knew, the sun was much higher in the sky, and the left side of his face felt raw and hot with sunburn. He raised himself up a little and saw that he, the teddy, and the towel he’d been lying on were surrounded by a narrow trench that was half-filled with water. And Heather was squatting beside him, laboring with a clamshell, busy diverting the rising tide from his little circle of sand. “You better not move, mister, or you’ll get wet.”
Rollins tried to focus on his watch. Could it really be almost twelve? Had two whole hours passed? “Why didn’t you wake me?” He worried about Tina coming back and finding Heather gone.
“The lady said she’d worn you out last night.” Heather continued to deepen the moat around him. Still, the tide sent occasional waves up over the moat’s interior restraining walls, soaking the backs of Rollins’ heels.
How could he have been so careless? He recalled, now, that he’d just been contemplating his own paternal status when he drifted off—and then he’d jettisoned his paternal responsibilities. He squeezed his eyes tight to push the sleep from his mind, then climbed to his feet and looked about. “Where is she, anyway?” A knot of worry tightened in his gut.
Heather stood beside him and shrugged. “I don’t know.”
An upwelling of irritation. “What do you mean, you don’t know?”
“I don’t.”
“She didn’t tell you where she was going?”
“I was kinda busy.” She squatted back down to return to her work.
Shielding his eyes from the bright sky, Rollins scanned the beach more carefully, but there was no sign of Marj. He made a megaphone of his hands and shouted for her—“Marj! Marj!” Heather put her fingers into her ears and a number of the bathers around him turned toward him. Rollins’ bowels felt as if they were twisted.
He led Heather farther down the beach, searching for Marj and calling. They went well past the last clump of bathers, two or three hundred yards distant. But he saw no sign of her. He called for Marj again, and waited for a return shout. But he heard only the sound of the sea pounding on the beach, and the cries of seagulls. He shouted again, louder. His yell sounded desperate, even to him. Teddy in hand, Heather shouted, too, at a higher pitch.
Fear gnawed at him, and Rollins turned to the little girl. “You remember that friend of your mother’s, Jerry Sloane?”
Heather scowled. “He’s mean. He called me ‘kid.’”
“You didn’t see him on the beach, did you?”
“Nope.”
“Did you see anyone else you recognized?”
She nodded. “Yup.”
Frightened, Rollins grabbed her with both hands. “Who was it?”
“You!” Heather gave him a big smile. “Fooled ya!”
Rollins glanced at his watch. It was twelve-thirty now. “Damn.” He led Heather back the other way, searching and calling. The little girl chugged alongside, kicking up little puffs of sand as she went. Rollins’ feet were raw from the sand, and his lungs heaved.
“Uh-oh!” Heather pointed to the moat as they passed it by. Rollins had left his shoes and socks inside it, but the tide had risen up over its banks to lap at the soles of the shoes.
Rollins hurried past without a word.
With Heather scrambling after him, Rollins continued on down the beach, past one spit of sand reaching down to the water, then another. Finally, Heather pointed. “Look!” Then she scurried ahead. When Rollins caught up, Heather was holding Marj’s pink top in her hands.
Rollins took it from her without a word. The material was so loose and light in his hands.
“Hey, look, over there!” Heather pointed to Marj’s red shorts that were just a few feet above the reach of the water. Rollins looked out to sea, and he saw a figure out in the surf, barely outlined against the fierce glint of the water under the high sun. Rollins saw an arm flash, then he heard a shout. “Hey, what time is it?”
“Marj?”
A glistening woman, obviously female, pushed through the water toward him, rising as she came. She was in her underwear, but, soaked through, they did little to cover her.
Rollins put his hand over Heather’s eyes.
“Hey, I’m decent.” It was Marj. “Jeez.”
Rollins nearly threw himself on her, even though she was soaking, he was so glad to see her. But Marj stepped away from him, and flicked her head back to shake the water from her hair. “You bring one of those towels?”
Rollins had left them inside the moat; they were probably sopping by now, or gone. Heather handed the top to Marj, who awkwardly pulled it over her wet, sticky skin. She had to hop a little on the sand to get into her shorts. “God, the body-surfing’s incredible here! With all the wind, the waves were perfect.”
“We were worried about you, you know,” Rollins said.
“We were calling and calling,” Heather added.
“I’m sorry.” She said it lightly, as if their fears couldn’t have been a big deal. “I had to go way off since I didn’t have my suit.”
“You might have borrowed one.”
“It would have been a hundred years old.”
“We thought maybe some guy got you,” Heather said.
“Out here? Nah. No way.” Marj plucked her shirt loose from where it stuck to her skin.
Despite her assurances, Rollins and Heather each held a hand of Marj’s as they made their way back up the beach to retrieve Rollins’ things.
The Arnolds had returned from the morning races and had settled themselves around the big table for lunch when Rollins, Marj, and Heather returned to the house. He needed to call Schecter, but the cousins, a little boisterous after what must have been a good showing out on the water, gave out a big shout when they saw Rollins come in. Uncle Lloyd demanded that he come over and introduce his “family,” as he put it. Rollins explained that he and Marj weren’t married, actually, nor was Heather his daughter. “Marj works with me at Johnson,” Rollins explained, remembering Marj’s annoyance that he hadn’t been so forthcoming before, “and Heather’s a neighbor.”
“Got the day off today, have you?” Lloyd asked.
“Something like that.” He glanced at Marj.
“Oh, playing hooky?”
From the loudness of their inquiries, Rollins figured they had been making good use of the sweating Heinekens that were grouped on a silver tray in the middle of the table.
“I didn’t think you
’d run off and gotten married on us,” said Wick, a robust-looking thirty-something whom Rollins last remembered as a pimply adolescent.
“Not like your father,” Lloyd added. “Where’s he hiding out these days? It’s been years since I’ve laid eyes on him. What’s going on there, you have any idea?”
“Actually, I have kind of lost touch with him myself.” He thought of his father in Schecter’s photographs. The whole table quieted, and a few heads shook sorrowfully.
Marie, in her soft French accent, followed by asking about Cornelia, as if there were a natural link between one disappearance and another.
“Neely?” Rollins asked, to make sure he understood correctly.
Marie nodded in that brisk French way, and the room went still once more, except for Heather, who was swinging Marj’s hand. Rollins tried to close out the conversation by saying that he didn’t know anything more than he’d written in the Beacon story, which he assumed they’d all seen. But the family only asked more questions. Even the “special friends”—a stunning redhead who seemed to belong to Whit, and a handsome blond fellow who sat beside Geena—chimed in. They all wanted to know: Where could Neely be? Was she really dead? Perhaps Rollins’ status as an expert on the case freed them to raise a topic that would otherwise have been off-limits. Nevertheless, it distressed him to hear the vast house—a place where Neely still seemed so alive—ring with such questions. The very sounds seemed to be driving her away again, out into oblivion. Rollins was able to silence them only by declaring that he was about to call a detective who might, in fact, have news for him about the case.
“Right now?” Whit asked.
Rollins nodded.
“Well, how dramatic,” Marie said.
Rollins used the telephone in the game room, settled onto the wicker settee, with a view of the surrounding marsh.
“And where the hell have you been?” Schecter asked the moment he came on the line.
Rollins had to tell him he was in Gloucester, which caused Schecter to sputter with amazement, and that only got worse when he said he had Heather with him. But his voice moderated as the detective thought the matter through. “Well, hang on to her,” he told Rollins. “Who knows? She might come in handy. But get your ass down here. If you ever want to get any answers on this case, now’s the time.”
Rollins returned to the dining room, where Heather was now sitting on Geena’s lap while she took bites out of her chicken salad sandwich, and Marj looked on tentatively from beside the mantelpiece, adorned with a model of a clipper ship. Perhaps she didn’t belong in such a place, with these people.
“Well?” asked Uncle Lloyd as he popped a slice of hard-boiled egg into his mouth.
“We should go,” Rollins said.
“Has something happened?” Whit asked eagerly.
“Not yet. But it might soon.”
The group all professed disappointment that Rollins and his “friends” had to leave so soon. They were going to put up the net for badminton after lunch, and Marie was organizing an expedition into town to buy lobsters for dinner. Geena would have liked to show Heather the upstairs.
“Do you play bridge?” the redhead asked Marj. “We were trying to get up a foursome.”
Marj shook her head. “Sorry.”
“How about canasta?” asked Whit.
“I don’t even know what that is.”
Geena did her best to sound reassuring. “Well, I’m sure you have lots of talents that we don’t know about.”
By then, Rollins had led Marj and Heather into the front hall, where Heather retrieved her towel and teddy bear, and then, shouting one last round of good-byes, they headed out to the car.
Rollins’ face was sore with sunburn, and his discomfort was not lessened by the sullen looks that Marj, still damp and sandy, gave him as they drove south. He thought he’d done a little better to fit her into the group, but now Marj made it sound as if she wasn’t sure it was worth the effort. “Are they all like that?” she asked.
“Like what?”
“Rich, I guess I mean.” She swept the hair off her forehead. “They don’t seem very nice.”
“They’re okay, just a little loud.”
“You sure you’re not just trying me out like those new clothes of yours? I keep thinking you’d be better off with a preppie like that Geena.”
“You mean, I should stick to my own kind?”
“Maybe.”
“Thanks a lot!” Rollins thought if he said it in a joking way, then she’d dismiss the whole idea as a joke. He shifted gears. “We don’t have to go back there if you don’t want. I don’t have much to do with my family, as you may have noticed.” He waited a moment, unsure if this was the time to say this. “I liked seeing you with Heather.”
“Oh, we’re having kids now, is that it?”
Rollins prudently remained silent, but, out of the corner of his eye, he could see Marj staring at him, shaking her head as if she couldn’t believe what she was seeing. “Sex really gets to you, doesn’t it?” she said.
“I’m serious.”
“I know you are. One thing about you, Rolo, is you are always serious.” There was only a slight edge to her voice, which Rollins appreciated.
Marj turned to check on Heather, who was snoozing in the backseat.
“She is cute, isn’t she?” Rollins said.
“Look, Rolo, maybe we should talk about this some other time, okay?”
Rollins returned his eyes to the road. “Of course.”
Schecter had given Rollins the Melrose address, which was off Upham Street near the center of town. Rollins had driven through the congested downtown a few times before, on one pursuit or another, but it seemed like a new place now that he knew Tina Mancuso lived here. He turned down a narrow street lined with modest two-story houses bounded by tiny yards.
“Hey, that’s my house!” Heather shouted when Rollins drew near a gray dwelling topped with a TV antenna.
“That’s right. A friend of mine and I are going for a visit.”
“Can I come?”
“No, I think you better wait with Marj.”
Heather made a long face and slumped down in her seat. “I wanted to show you my room.”
“Maybe later,” Rollins said.
“We’ll have a good time,” Marj assured her.
Schecter’s silver Cressida was parked up ahead, a short ways down from the house. Rollins tapped on the window on the passenger side, and Schecter popped the lock. Rollins took a seat beside him. Schecter was wearing a University of Maine baseball cap, and he was working a cigar, which had filled the car with smoke.
“Took her swimming, huh?” Schecter tamped the ash into the tray under the radio.
Rollins didn’t want to discuss it. “Tina leave yet?”
“No, Wayne did.”
After spending the day with Heather, Rollins wasn’t sure he was ready for an ugly confrontation with her mother.
“Just a couple minutes ago,” Schecter went on. “I tried to follow him, but I got cut off by a fat-assed truck. Maybe you should give me surveillance lessons. I seem to be losing my touch.” He glanced at Rollins, as if to see how such a rare gesture of self-effacement was going down. “I was going to see if I could pick him up at his house, but I didn’t want to lose the broad. She’s still in there, as far as I can tell.”
Rollins must have frowned because Schecter asked, “Why, you got a problem with that?”
“I’m worried about Heather.”
“Nothing’s going to happen to Heather.”
“Tina’s going to figure out that Heather told us about the Sloane connection, and she’s going to take it out on her.”
“So?”
Rollins had adjusted the rearview so that he could see Heather and Marj in his car behind them. Heather was up in the front seat, flipping the sun visor up and down. “She might get hurt, Al.”
“Rollins, look, don’t go soft on me, all right? The kid’ll be fine.”
Rollins looked over at him. “Are yours?”
“Cut the shit, would you?” Schecter said angrily. “You want to keep running all your life? Is that what you want? And what about that girlfriend of yours? You want her to keep running? You can’t even live in your apartment anymore. I mean, my God, Rollins, where does it stop?”
Rollins shifted uncomfortably in his seat.
“Go ahead. Wimp out.” Schecter stubbed out his cigar. “I’ll go in there myself.” He opened the door and climbed out of the car, headed across the street to the Mancuso house.
To gain something, did you always have to risk something else? Rollins slammed his hand down on the seat beside him, then opened the car door to follow. “Okay,” he called out to Schecter across the street. “Just wait a second, will you?”
Schecter took Rollins by a high fence where they couldn’t be seen from the house and he laid out the plan. They’d go in together. Rollins would get first crack at asking the questions, then Schecter would follow with his own. “I’ve got my gun, in case anything happens.” He pulled back his jacket to show Rollins the small automatic in the discreet leather holster on his belt. Rollins had seen the gun before, but it stunned him to see it again in a situation where he might use it. “Oh, quit worrying,” Schecter told him. “I’m just going to throw a scare into her.” Schecter went on a few steps, then stopped again. “She was fucking with you, don’t forget. She was really jerking you around.”
Schecter led the way up to the front door. The house could have used a little work. The shingles looked battered, and a couple of window panes were cracked. Up on the concrete landing, Schecter had Rollins press the buzzer while he himself stood well off to the side, out of view.
It took forever for the door to open, and when it did, it only cracked open a few inches, secured by a thin brass chain at about eye level. “Well look at this,” Tina said. “What are you doing here?”
“I’ve got some questions for you.”
“Sorry,” Tina said. “Not buying today.” She started to close the door, but before she could lock it, Schecter stepped across and rammed his shoulder into the door, ripping the chain off the door frame with a splintering sound. He bulled his way inside, and Rollins followed behind.
The Dark House Page 28
