“You despise the whole subject of china.”
“So I’m being selfless. Look—nothing my mother can say will change how I feel about you, Merry.”
“But it’s having a dreadful effect on my feelings for you,” Merry objected. “I can’t help wondering what sort of nightmare I’ve talked myself into. She wants to have the wedding in New York, Peter! With the reception at the Plaza! I mean—that’s just not me. It’s not what I signed on for.”
“And now you’re wondering whether the whole thing is a mistake,” he concluded, with the resignation born of long familiarity.
“Of course. I mean—no, of course not. I love you. I do. I just don’t love … your baggage.”
“I’m not asking you to.” He shook her shoulders gently. “I’m asking for three days here in Greenwich, and then a whale of a good time next week in Manhattan. I’m not trying to add any pressure to your life, God knows—I saw what those depositions in Boston did to you.”
“And the trial will only be worse,” Merry said hollowly.
“I know. I brought you here to have some fun, not to be judged by yet another jury. Try to ignore my mother. Ignore the whole lousy year, if you can.”
Would she have used the word lousy to describe the past eight months? Probably not. What came to mind were words like painful, and bruising, and unremittingly bleak. Her giddy relief at having survived last April’s terrors had turned swiftly to remorse—for the lives she had failed to save—and anger at her own gullibility. Had she been less easy to impress, a killer might never have clouded her mind. Had she relied more on objective study, and less on gut instinct—which had urged her to suspect an innocent party—two people at least might still be alive today. Self-loathing consumed Merry whenever the subject of the Osborne investigation arose; and for most of the past week, it had been forced unremittingly down her throat. First by the prosecution, who should have been her allies, and then at the hands of the defense—a gaggle of lawyers baldly calculating how Meredith’s testimony might be turned to their client’s advantage. She wanted nothing so much as to put the debacle behind her—but some nights, staring wakefully into the darkness, she knew she never would. It was now of a piece with her successes and failures, written like a growth ring into the trunk of her life.
“You need and deserve a vacation,” Peter said, comprehending much that had filled her silence.
Before she could reply, Georgiana poked her head around the hall door. “Merry?” she said. “Telephone. It’s your father.”
Chapter Two
“Dad,” Merry said into the phone. “What’s up?”
“Hello, Meredith.” Her father cleared his throat. She could feel his indecision across twenty-seven miles of sea and one hundred fifty of land.
“Is everything okay?”
“Yes. Well, not exactly. How are things in Greenwich?”
“Fine. Great.” She raised her eyebrows in exasperation at Peter, who stood in the middle of Georgiana’s kitchen with a loaf of bread and a jar of peanut butter, his approximation of breakfast. “Is … Ralph okay?” Ralph Waldo Folger, Merry’s grandfather, was approaching the age of eighty-five, and his right hip was threatening to give out.
“Ralph’s just fine.”
“Well. Then we’re all fine.” She worried at the diamond solitaire on the third finger of her left hand, its band too loose past the knuckle, and waited for her father to come to the point.
Peter stabbed a knife into the peanut butter jar, pulled out a chair, and draped his feet inelegantly over George’s kitchen table. Trace odors of sweat and running shoe drifted toward Merry. She fought the impulse to reach out and tickle the ball of his foot.
“Meredith—”
“Yes?”
“We found a body floating in the harbor this morning.”
“Whoa.” Merry turned her back on the dirty socks and bent her blond head protectively over the receiver. “So … what is it? A drowning?”
“On the face of it.”
“Accidental?”
“I don’t know.”
They were both silent for the space of several heartbeats. “Why shouldn’t it be accidental, Dad?”
“Hell, it might be. But it just feels … weird. We’ve got an ID on the guy and he was working a scallop boat. Jay Santorski. All of twenty-one.”
“And it doesn’t make sense to you that a scalloper would simply fall into the water and not come out.”
“Does it make sense to you?” John Folger asked.
“Water’s pretty cold this time of year.”
“Thirty-eight degrees, this morning.”
“Hypothermia wouldn’t take long.”
“Few minutes, maybe. And he was wearing a ski jacket, shoes. All that would drag him down.” Her father’s voice seemed to gain confidence with every sentence exchanged, as though he had moved from hostile terrain into familiar territory.
He really wants to believe it, Merry thought, but in his heart he can’t. “Any idea when he went into the water?” she asked him.
“The cold makes it hard to tell, but Fairborn is saying he’s probably been dead around eight hours.” Dr. John Fairborn volunteered as medical examiner for the Nantucket force. “Coast Guard pulled the body out about eight A.M.”
Merry glanced at her watch. Nine-thirty. “So we’ll say midnight or thereabouts. You think he fell over the side of a boat or off the wharf?”
“Who’d take a boat out at midnight in December? Besides, there’s none floating around empty in the harbor. We did find a bike that may have been Santorski’s submerged in the shallows of the Easy Street Basin. I’ve got Seitz checking for a registration now.”
Merry could imagine it—the rusted frame of a beat-up old three-speed, hundreds like them on the island, skittering off the edge of the boat basin near the renovated fishing shanties of Old North Wharf. It was one of the more historic places to call home on Nantucket, almost prestigious. But at this time of year, a lot of the seasonal cottages would be deserted. It was unlikely, she thought, that anyone would have heard a cry for help.
“Did Santorski live at Old North, Dad?”
“Nope, He had a room in a group house out in Surfside.”
Where some unfortunate member of the force was probably parading the dripping bike even now, and informing the young man’s roommates that he was dead. “You might want to get a crew to dredge the basin for evidence,” Merry suggested. “Or maybe send the Pottses down.” Tim and Phil Potts, brothers and officers of the Nantucket police, pinch-hit as the force’s diving team whenever necessary.
“They’re a little busy right now.”
So am I, Dad. “Chief,” she temporized, “this really could have been an accident. You know how close the Rose & Crown is to Easy Street.”
“Yeah,” he said doubtfully.
“Santorski would hardly be the first twenty-one-year-old to go drinking on a Thursday night.” And even a scalloper—a drunk scalloper—might not crawl out of December water once he rode his bike in.
Peter squeezed her shoulder and mouthed, Taking a shower. She waved at him distractedly. “Any sign of violence on the body?” she asked her father.
“Not violence, exactly. Abrasions on the wrists and ankles that could have come from a rope—”
“Bound and gagged and sent in on a bicycle? Then where’s the rope now?”
“—or they might be nothing more than posthumous cuts from the jetty’s rocks. The corpse was first sighted rolling in the channel.”
“It should be easy enough to decide which.” Merry was thinking out loud. “Postdeath trauma doesn’t bleed.”
“And predeath abrasions would be washed clean of blood after eight hours in salt water,” her father retorted. “I’m no coroner, Meredith. I’ll wait to hear from the state crime lab whether the corpse got these cuts from the jetties or … something else.”
Again, Merry felt John Folger’s tension singing down the telephone wire like an electrical shock. She
frowned in irritation; it was unlike him to offer only half his mind. “What’s really worrying you, Chief?”
For an instant, while he debated what to tell her, she could almost track his evasion in the way he drew breath. “The kid had needle holes in his left arm, Mere. Probably an intravenous drug user, Fairborn says.”
Merry closed her eyes and leaned against the kitchen door frame. “This guy was mainlining drugs, and you’re wondering whether he died by accident? Come on, Dad! He died from his own stupidity!”
“We don’t know that,” her father objected sternly.
“Why are you even calling me? This is a job for the state crime lab’s forensic pathologist. It’s not a case of murder.”
“Meredith—it might actually be heroin. I’d like you to come home. Look into things a little.”
There was a dubious silence.
“Heroin isn’t just any drug,” he persisted, as though she had suggested otherwise. “If it’s being dealt here on Nantucket, among the twenty-something crowd—if this drowning was an overdose—I want to know about it now. Before it trickles down to the high school kids.”
“And the kindergartners. Right.” She paced to the end of the phone cord’s length, turned, and paced back. Peter would not be happy if she ruined his plans for the coming week. He might even think she had arranged the summons just to escape his mother. “What do you expect me to do, Dad, before the autopsy report is in? As you said—we don’t know that this Santorski was shooting heroin.”
“Oh, Meredith—” He sounded too weary for nine-thirty in the morning. “Find out who the kid hung out with. What he was doing the night he died. The usual scut work. You should learn fairly quickly whether this was an isolated incident, or just the tip of the iceberg.”
At which point, she would be expected to dry-dock the iceberg. “Are you asking as my dad, or my chief?”
“Both.” John paused, and then added grudgingly, “I’d feel better if you were here.”
Merry sighed. “It’s that important?”
“I wouldn’t tear you away from the Masons for anything less.”
“Okay. Okay. I’ll cut short my first vacation in years because some junkie got himself drowned. But why can’t Matt Bailey make a fool of himself over this one? It’s about his speed.”
“Bailey has disappeared.”
“What?” Merry stood straighter, fingers clenched around the receiver. Her distinguished detective colleague was habitually late for work, but even Matt Bailey took Christmas Stroll somewhat seriously. “Maybe he’s still in bed.”
“We checked. Before I decided to bother you in the middle of your vacation, I sent Howie Seitz over to his house. Bailey didn’t come home last night. His son is frantic.”
For the first time in her long acquaintance with Matt Bailey—whom she resented, despised, and rarely acknowledged was even breathing—Merry felt a spark of sympathy. Bailey’s son, Ryan, was only twelve. Bailey would never have left the boy without a word. And even though Bailey’s disappearance surely had nothing to do with the death by drowning of a drug-addicted scalloper—
“I’m on my way, Dad,” she said, and hung up the phone.
“Merry—what are you doing?”
Peter loomed in the doorway of George’s guest room, and she could see immediately that he was angry. Which meant that he already had a fair idea of what she was doing. He resembled nothing so much as a hawk—long, thin nose, prominent cheekbones, a sharp brow jutting over cool gray eyes—but when he was angry, the raptor in him fairly screamed aloud. Facing him now, Merry felt like a rodent cowering beneath a shadowed wingspan.
“I’m packing.” She reached for a sweater, attempted to fold it, then tossed it in her suitcase. “That was my dad.”
“I know. Why are you packing?”
“There’s been a—a death. He wants me home right away.”
“A death? You mean a murder?”
“He’s not sure. It looks like a drowning, actually—”
“Oh, for God’s sake, Meredith!”
Peter never shouted. And Peter never called her Meredith. He glanced over his shoulder guiltily, aware of the speed with which argument travels, then eased her door closed behind him.
“The last time I checked,” he said in a more reasonable tone, “there were three detectives on the Nantucket force. Three. One of whom is presently on vacation and unavailable.”
“And another of whom has completely disappeared,” Merry retorted. “Matt Bailey has gone AWOL.”
“Matt Bailey has been AWOL most of his life.”
She tried not to smirk, and failed. “Admittedly. He’s a complete chucklehead. But Dad sounded pretty upset.”
“You are not leaving twelve hours into your vacation. Our vacation. I absolutely refuse.”
Merry leaned pleadingly across the expanse of down comforter. “Don’t bully me, Peter. I’ve got to go back.”
He blew out his breath in exasperation and turned toward the window. The gray eyes roved over the backyard, where Georgiana’s two boys were engaged in constructing a snow fort. Peter barely saw them, Merry knew. He was marshaling his arguments.
“Where’s Fred McIlhenney?”
Fred McIlhenney was the force’s third detective—and like Bailey, technically senior to Merry. Unlike Bailey, he had earned the respect of the entire force.
“Fred’s on loan to the DA’s office in Barns table through March. You know that, Peter. Or at least, I’ve mentioned it before. I suppose there’s a possibility you weren’t listening to me.” The words came out more sharply than she had intended, and when Peter looked at her, she found she could not meet his eyes.
“Am I in the habit of ignoring you?”
Merry shrugged. “When I talk about my work—yes.”
He sat down on the edge of the bed and gripped her wrist. She shook him off angrily and tipped a collection of mismatched socks into the lid of her suitcase.
“I’m the only one who does listen to you anymore, Merry. Everyone else has had enough.”
She zipped the bag closed and pulled it off the bed. It dropped like a lead weight directly on Peter’s foot. He yelped in outrage.
“Oh, God, Peter—I’m really sorry.” She sank to his side. “Are you okay?”
“I’m just fine,” he said, cradling his instep and glaring at her. “Aside from the fact that you never seem to see me anymore, I’m just great.”
“That was an accident.”
“I’m not talking about my foot. I’m talking about—everything.”
“Everything?”
“Oh, Merry—” He stroked one hand gently along the curve of her blond head, then pulled her against him. “I’ve spent the past year trying to get your mind off your work, at the urging of everyone who cares about you. You’ve been walking around in a fog. Whether it’s the stress of the trial—or something worse—I can’t begin to say.”
“That’s ridiculous.” She reared away from him stiffly. “If you can’t handle my job, Peter, you should have said so long ago.”
The patent unfairness of this was obvious to them both.
Peter regarded her silently, a crooked smile hovering on his lips. “All right. We’ll call that a different topic. Let’s talk about your vacation right now. So what if McIlhenney and Bailey are out of commission? There must be someone who can cover for you, Merry. The Nantucket force shouldn’t fall apart every time you leave the island. You’re good, but you’re not that good.”
“I didn’t say that I was,” she shot back, stung. “I said that my father—my chief—ordered me to return to work, okay?”
“You’re actually trying to tell me you had no choice?”
“Of course I didn’t! Do you think I want to ruin our vacation?”
The gray eyes met hers without mercy or quarter. Then he said, “Yes, Merry. I do.”
“What does that mean?” She gripped the suitcase and hauled it, staggering, to the door.
Peter threw up his hands. “
It means you’ve resisted meeting my family for months. You refuse even to talk about a wedding date, much less make any plans. And now that I’ve finally got you to Greenwich, you’re packed and leaving twelve hours after you arrive. A far stupider guy would have figured this out long ago, Merry. You don’t want to marry me.”
Heat flooded her face and her breath came suddenly short, as though throttled by a blow. “Peter. Never think that. It’s just … it’s been such a terrible year.”
“I suppose it has been.” Merry saw the pain in his face before it faded behind a protective mask. “For both of us. You’ve been struggling with your … demons … and I’ve been trying to pretend that they don’t sleep in our bed and eat away at our dreams. But they do, Merry. They do. And it’s time to talk about it.”
“You don’t understand,” she attempted helplessly.
“I understand more than you know.” He took her firmly by the shoulders, his gaze intent. “I understand that you feel responsible for too many deaths, and that even my love can’t absolve you. I wish that it could. You did all that was humanly possible last spring, and no one could have done more. But what I think or say doesn’t count. Only John Folger, as your boss and your dad, can let you off that hook.”
“Maybe it’s not his job.” She had meant to say it lightly, but the words were strangled and bitter.
Peter released her. “You have too much ability to need his good opinion quite so much, Merry. There’s more to life than running errands for your father.”
“I don’t run errands!”
He laughed harshly. “No—you single-handedly manage every burglary, arson, and homicide on Nantucket Island. You’re at John’s beck and call, regardless of how little he appreciates it, or how much it costs you. Well, it’s cost us both, this time. And I’m not going to take it quietly.”
There was no hint of refuge in the gray eyes, nothing but ice when Peter looked at her; and she understood suddenly how much she had worn him down. She managed a smile.
“I think you’re exaggerating just a bit—”
“What a relief to hear your father’s voice this morning,” he continued, as though she had never spoken. “He gave you a reason to leave. You’ve been looking for one for months. Haven’t you?”
Death in a Cold Hard Light Page 2
