Death in a Cold Hard Light

by Francine Mathews

  “I thought you two would be done with food hours ago,” she said, shrugging off her coat. “Where’s Dad?”

  “Phone call. He’ll be down in a minute. I’m surprised to see you, my dear. I thought you’d be stranded in Boston.”

  “I should have been. It’s no exaggeration, Ralph, to say I nearly died tonight. One woman on my flight was actually treated for lacerations, the turbulence was so bad. We were bouncing around like eggs in a carton.”

  Her grandfather never wasted time on exclamation. “Need a drink?”

  She shook her head, and followed him into the kitchen. “Seitz took care of me. But I’d love some dessert.”

  “It’s Nantucket cranberry pie.”

  “Perfect.”

  “Your father will be glad you came.”

  “You mean I had a choice?”

  Ralph understood, and grinned. “Sorry about your vacation. Has young Peter retired in a funk to the farm?”

  “Peter has retired into deepest Greenwich.” There it was again—a faint anxiety snarling her entrails. “If he had a ring to return I’m sure it would be in my possession right now.”

  “Bosh,” Ralph said comfortably, and reached for his coffeepot.

  Merry threw herself into a kitchen chair and glanced around the familiar walls. Very little had changed at Tattle Court since her departure last spring, but she could see that the house was growing dingy. It might only be an illusion heightened by her present mood and the early December dark; or then again, it might be the bald truth. Her father had never spared much time for the place, and Ralph’s attention was given over wholly to his garden. On one kitchen counter alone sat a pile of unsorted socks, last week’s supply of mail-order catalogues in imminent danger of sliding to the floor, a crumpled box of cat food, three burnt-out lightbulbs, a packet of California poppy seeds, and the remains of a ham sandwich. What her grandmother Sylvie would have done at the sight of it, Merry shuddered to think.

  Her mother, on the other hand, would hardly have noticed.

  Tabitha, the calico cat, twined like a ghost around Merry’s right ankle and mewed soundlessly. She reached for the warm weight of fur and buried her nose in Tabitha’s neck, imagining her father growing older, with or without Ralph, and the house falling down quietly around him. Merry stroked the cat’s chin and wished, suddenly, for an outside influence. A nice sort of woman who could take care of both the Folger men. Another Sylvie—only her father’s age, this time.

  “Hello, Meredith,” he said, interrupting her thoughts. He bent to kiss her cheek. “Thank you for coming home. I’m sorry it was necessary.”

  Tabitha pounced from Merry’s lap to the floor and skittered into the shadows of the empty dining room.

  “Necessary?” Merry said, brushing a few stray hairs from her sweater. “What a definite word. I’ve never thought of myself as necessary. Useful, perhaps; convenient, sometimes—but the without which, nothings in your life? I’m shocked, Dad. I thought you were sufficient unto yourself.”

  “You still have your sense of humor. That’s something,” he replied, and inhaled the scent of Ralph Waldo’s coffee. “That’s decaf, I hope.”

  “Of course it is.” Ralph poured him a mugful. “You have enough on your mind to murder sleep tonight, son, without the Java jitters.”

  “What an original mangling of Shakespeare, Ralph.” Merry was amused, but her father appeared unmoved.

  He cocked an eyebrow at her over the rim of his mug. “You abandon poor Peter tonight?”

  “I was denied the privilege. Peter has abandoned me.” She had intended the words to sound carefree or, at the worst, self-mocking; but they came out forlorn.

  “Whoops.” John took a swig of coffee. “Sorry.”

  “No, you’re not.” Merry reached for the plates and pie forks and dealt them out like cards around the table. “You’re absolutely complacent. I might almost think you summoned me home out of sheer loneliness.”

  “But I’ll never give you the satisfaction of knowing, will I?”

  “Among other things. Why exactly am I home, Dad?”

  “Because a scalloper fell into the boat basin last night.”

  “Did he? Is that what you think happened—or what you hope happened?”

  “You’d prefer something worse?”

  “I’d like to think I came home for a reason. A routine drowning is something Seitz could have handled.” She studied her father acutely. “Howie says you hadn’t even seen the needle marks when you called the station for evidence collection. What raised your hackles, Dad? Did you know this guy?”

  “Of course not,” he said quickly. “I just thought the death was… suspicious.”

  Across the room at the sink, Ralph Waldo cleared his throat ferociously. The set of his back and shoulders screamed skepticism.

  “I’d be inclined to call in Fairborn and Clarence at any unexplained death.” John Folger set his mug on the table with all the force of an ultimatum. “It’s the best policy, Meredith. You can’t record observations once a body’s been flown across the Sound.”

  “Admittedly. Did Clarence or the Doc share your concerns?”

  “Fairborn is never concerned about anything. He lit a cigarette over the corpse and flicked the ashes into the sea. Clarence didn’t make it to the scene.”

  Ralph Waldo ran a knife under the tap, blunting conversation for an instant. Then he turned and leaned heavily against the countertop, arms folded and bright blue gaze fixed on Merry’s face.

  His hip is hurting again, she thought, but he’ll never say so. He won’t say what he thinks of this business, either. “So tell me, Dad. Why did you call Connecticut and order me home?”

  “I think that’s fairly obvious. The needle marks.”

  “—and their implication of illegal drugs. Which you then ordered Howie not to mention to anyone.”

  Her father flushed. “Has Seitz been complaining?”

  “Of course not. He simply answered my questions.”

  “And just what sort of questions were you asking, Meredith?”

  He gripped his mug so tightly, his knuckles were white. Unreasonable, this degree of anger—unless she had touched a nerve. Merry glanced at her grandfather. Ralph’s gaze was unreadable.

  “I’m simply trying to pin down my role in this case. It’s pretty nebulous until we know what was in Santorski’s system—if anything. Am I looking for a murderer? Or a drug dealer? Or just the reason this kid drowned?”

  John Folger opened his mouth as if to speak, then took a sip of coffee instead.

  Buying time, Merry thought; her uneasiness deepened.

  “I don’t know what to say, Meredith. If your years of training and experience don’t lead you through this case, then I certainly can’t. It seems simple enough. Find out why Santorski died. Period. End of story. Are we ever going to eat that pie, Ralph?”

  So now it was her problem—her failure to handle the job, again. Merry felt her throat constrict with anger, and swallowed hard.

  “If it’s that simple, Dad, why did you have to ruin my vacation?”

  “So that’s what this is about. Your vacation.”

  “I almost wish it were.” She regretted the bitterness before it was fairly well out of her mouth. This was not the time or place to confront her father. Not before Ralph, who still stood too rigidly against the bulwark of his kitchen counter. For safety’s sake, she retreated into the case. “Everything Seitz told me tonight raised more questions than it answered.”

  “Such as?” Ralph interjected.

  Merry turned to him with relief. “Why a Harvard boy dropped out of college, and what he studied while he was there. Why, having dropped out, he chose to spend the crudest months of the year in an open boat dredging scallops. Whether the saxophone-playing Owen Harley, his scalloping captain, invited him to Nantucket. Whether they had a falling out—over drugs, or women, or money, or something more obscure. And,” she concluded, “what the distinguished and sadly absent Ma
tthew Bailey might have had to do with it all.”

  John Folger choked on his coffee.

  “Don’t tell me,” Merry exclaimed. “You’ve found Bailey.”

  “Actually, no.” He reached for a napkin and blotted the front of his shirt distractedly.

  “Well, then?”

  “Well, what?”

  “Why are you looking like a kid caught out with a copy of Playboy, Dad?”

  “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “Oh, come on—”

  “Matt Bailey is not your priority right now, Meredith.”

  “His son might disagree with you.”

  “His son is happily eating pizza with the Pottses.”

  Of course. Tim and Phil were the closest things to friends Bailey could claim on the force. When they should have been diving in the Easy Street Basin this morning, they’d been saddled with little Ryan. That explained one thing, at least.

  “And what do the Pottses think about Bailey’s disappearance?” she asked her father.

  “They think we should wait a few days before we call his ex-wife.”

  “They have no idea where he might be?”

  “None. Or none they’re willing to reveal.”

  Ralph pushed himself away from the counter as though suddenly reminded of his duties, fetched a second mug, and poured Merry’s coffee. She took it from him gladly. “Was there anything in his daily calendar?”

  “Of course not, Meredith.” John was at the end of his patience. “If he’d made an appointment somewhere, he’d have told his son. Bailey has simply gone AWOL in a poor attempt to get fired.”

  Her grandfather drew a sharp breath, then expelled it almost immediately, as though the act might cut the tension knotting the room. Merry pitied him; he’d expected a festive holiday evening, and she’d turned it into an interrogation.

  “Have you made any effort to find Matt, Dad?”

  “I will,” John said defensively, “once Christmas Stroll is over.”

  Ralph Waldo reached for his pocket handkerchief and began to mop his brow. For his sake, and the sake of the cranberry pie growing colder by the minute, Merry almost conceded the fight. She took the plate Ralph held out to her, then set it on the table deliberately. She hadn’t come all the way home from Greenwich to concede. “Do you actually know where Bailey is?”

  Her father kept his gaze on the depths of his coffee cup and shook his head.

  “But there is some connection with this drowned-kid.”

  “No!” he exploded. “For God’s sake—can’t you just do your job and stop asking questions?”

  Merry raised one eyebrow and sat back in the chair. “I think I’ll just let the idiocy of that statement reveal itself, overtime.”

  “Try a little food, Meredith,” Ralph suggested. “It usually makes the difficult more palatable.”

  “Meaning me or Dad, Ralph?”

  “I refuse to be drawn into this.” He sat down, with a faint gasp that might have been stiffness or pain—then planted himself firmly in the middle of the mess. “But it’s clear that you two have more to settle than Merry’s ruined vacation.”

  “What does that mean?” John Folger spluttered.

  “Ask your daughter.” Ralph’s blue eyes, darker than his son’s, gave no quarter. “Ask her how she feels about working for a man who doesn’t trust her judgment enough to acquaint her fully with the facts of a case.”

  “I’ve told Merry all she needs to know.”

  “Have you?” The bushy white eyebrows rose like an inquisitorial Santa’s.

  “Look.” John Folger slapped his broad hand down on the tabletop, sending plates and forks abruptly skyward. “Merry’s been trusted with more responsibility than any other officer on the force. She has no reason to complain, by God. Some people would say I’ve been too indulgent toward her.”

  “Since I mismanaged the Betsy Osborne investigation so royally?” Merry demanded, flaring.

  “I’ve never suggested that, young lady! And I’m not the reason you’re living with those memories.”

  “No. I am. That’s clear enough. I’m the reason those people died. Even you can’t take that away from me, Dad.”

  There was a pained silence.

  “I’m sorry, Meredith.”

  “So am I.”

  He sank back into his seat, and unfurled his napkin. The constraint between them settled like mud on a river bottom. Merry lifted her fork, then set it down again. What exactly hadn’t her father told her about Bailey and the dead scalloper?

  “How did the depositions go, by the way?” he asked, with an effort at carelessness.

  “Let’s just say they went.” Merry felt suddenly limp with exhaustion, and wished she were back home in bed. “The defense team did its best to suggest I had a personal grudge against the defendant, whom I somehow framed in the victim’s living room. All of which I naturally denied, and sounded ridiculous in so doing.”

  “Christ,” her father muttered. “Lawyers. Our job would be a lot simpler if we never had to deal with them. I just got off the phone with McIlhenney. He’s getting the same treatment.”

  “Fred?” Merry clutched at the subject of the force’s third detective with transparent haste. “What could Fred possibly have done wrong?”

  “It’s what he didn’t do,” John retorted, “if you believe the defense team for Marty Johansen. Fred thinks they’re planning to discredit Joey.”

  Merry whistled under her breath. Marty Johansen was Nantucket born, the last of a large family of plumbers and fishermen who lived out on the small islet of Tuckernuck, a half mile off Nantucket’s western shore. Marty was also a thoroughgoing screwup who had an inordinate fondness for cocaine. On three separate occasions he had generously offered to sell some to Joey Figuera, a long-haired, goateed part-time bouncer at the Rose & Crown. Joey had favored Johansen with the sales—and had turned over the cocaine immediately to Fred McIlhenney. Despite his nose ring and his indolent approach to conventional workplaces, Joey was a highly trained narcotics officer detailed from the mainland. McIlhenney was one of only two people (the other being John Folger) aware of Figuera’s true purpose on the island, and he was the only member of the force permitted to make personal contact with the man. Even Merry had been unaware of the operation conducted for months virtually under her nose.

  Throughout the previous winter, McIlhenney had spent successive midnights parked in the desertion of the Mia-comet Golf Course, waiting for Joey to make contact. Joey brought his drug buys to Fred, who bagged the white powder and sent it on to the state crime lab for chemical testing. Once verified as cocaine, the drugs were returned and stored in the blue mailbox that served the station as an evidence file.

  Fred’s discretion and patience were rewarded with the island’s most significant drug bust in years. He had rolled up an entire network of seventeen people in the predawn hours last April, including Marty Johansen’s principal supplier. The trials were scheduled for May.

  “What didn’t Fred do?” Merry asked her father now.

  “According to Johansen’s defense team, he didn’t control Joey Figuera. They’ve decided that Figuera was a freelancer—that he set his buddies up. And that McIlhenney was nothing but a pawn.”

  “Fred filed an affidavit after every report,” Merry protested. “He wrote receipts for the police funds he paid to Figuera.”

  “—For both the drug buys and Joey’s salary. I know.” For the first time that evening, John Folger looked unswervingly at Merry, and she saw the sick defeat in his eyes. “But the defense says they’ve got somebody who’ll testify Joey routinely did cocaine with Marty Johansen.”

  “And did he, Dad?”

  “He denies it.”

  “Then it’ll come down to a jury. In the best tradition of American justice.”

  “Figuera better lose the beard and the nose ring, that’s all I can say. We can’t afford to look stupid twice.”

  Merry caught the reference immediately, and
reared back from the table. From John’s sudden flush, she guessed the gibe was unintentional; but it told her volumes about his true opinion of the Osborne case.

  “No, Dad,” she said dryly, “we can’t have McIlhenney tarred with my brush.”

  “I didn’t mean—”

  “Oh, I think you did.”

  He hesitated, then dropped his head and shoved his fork into his pie.

  Ralph Waldo reached across the table and squeezed Merry’s hand. A fleeting touch, like a dry leaf brushing her palm, wordlessly comforting. His confection of cranberries and almonds was lodged stubbornly in her throat. She was long past tasting it. But she smiled at her grandfather, feeling she owed him that much.

  Matt Bailey was not mentioned again.

  After the dishes were done, Merry kissed Ralph goodbye and nodded awkwardly to her father. He stood with his arms hanging stiffly at his sides, and watched her trudge down the front path in the driving rain. Then he opened the storm door a crack and leaned out into the wet.

  “Sure you don’t want a ride?”

  “Don’t bother, Dad,” Merry called over her shoulder, and heard the click of the doorjamb a moment later. It was a trifling exchange, but it buoyed her spirits. She knew that he had tried, in that last moment, to show his concern. Whatever else he had withheld tonight, that much had slipped past his defenses.

  She splashed toward town through the driving rain, hood drawn up over her white-blond hair. And tried not to notice that everyone else had a warm hand to hold.

  Main Street was awash with brave lights flickering in the wind, as though desperate to sustain a holiday note despite the worsening gale. The raw damp brought out the pungency of decaying leaves and the mesquite burning on restaurant grills. There was loneliness in the air, too—autumn dying, Merry thought, or maybe Peter’s absence.

  She turned from the carnival of town into the tree-lined quiet of Federal Street. Candlelight glowed in the windows of the restaurants on either side; evergreens and sodden ribbon fluttered maniacally in the wind. There were shadows here, lurking pools of black that mirrored the soulless sky; and emerging from one of these, transfixed by a window-pane of warmth, was the idea of a face. Remote, disembodied, with heavily ringed eyes; a girl’s face, frightened and ethereal. As Merry watched, it whirled and went out. An instant later, she heard footsteps running.