by David Daniel
“It isn’t me watching,” St. Onge said. “Droney’s the one who keeps tabs on you.”
Droney, Captain Francis X., aka the Ogre, had been the foot behind the bum’s rush when I left the cops. “How is he these days?”
“Tread light around him. No lie. He’s still got a few teeth. Sharp ones.”
I acknowledged it. And since Ed had raised the topic of the corroded shotgun standing in my coat closet, I asked him if there were any cold cases in the city where a sawed-off had been used in the commission of a crime but was never found. To his knowledge there were none.
“The case could be very old,” I said. “The shotgun is.”
“Want to tell me more?”
You could take the Fifth with St. Onge, but it would show poor judgment to lie. I gave him the story. “You’re lucky you didn’t end up shot by the patrol officer and become a martyr to misapplied deadly force.”
“Then the city could give me the funeral it’s been planning for years.”
He let it lie. “Parker Brothers, huh? Don’t they make Monopoly?”
I said I thought it was a different outfit. He said he’d check and let me know. “If it’s clean, you can bring it in here and we’ll dispose of it.”
“You still drop them in Boston Harbor?”
“Something like that.”
“No, thanks, I’ll dismantle it all by myself.”
“Be careful you don’t get your nose caught in the pliers. And now that you’ve got your vacuum cleaner back, maybe you ought to use it. Last time I was up in that flea bin, the dust bunnies looked like tumbleweeds.”
“Before you go—the reason I called—there was a case of a runaway kid, an overnighter, apparently, picked up with a group of other juveniles here last February. One may have been charged as an adult.”
“For?”
“Loitering.”
“Ha, that’s almost refreshing.”
I gave him Michelle Nickerson’s name.
“Let me get this right. You want me to open official files for unofficial business.”
“Please,” I said.
In the pause, I could hear his ire ticking, like a car that’s been run hard on a bad road. But he knew that favors didn’t run only one way. He sighed and said he’d get back to me. The phone rang almost as soon as I hung up. It was Paula Jensen.
“I talked it over with Ross,” she said. “Instead of you staying in a motel, we’d like to offer you the beach house.”
“Where your ex is supposed to be?” I asked.
“We’ve already paid for the week, and there’s lots of room. Then you’d know right away if they returned.”
“When they came stumbling home to find Goldilocks.”
“I’m sorry. I don’t mean to tell you how to do your job. If you’d prefer a motel—”
“Mrs. Jensen—”
“Paula, please. I’m probably keeping you from other cases.”
“Paula, I could tell you I’ve got a staff of associates going twenty-four seven to handle the caseload here at my corporate towers. The truth is the agency is me, a telephone, and that Ford out there. As for caseload, that’s hyperbole. I’ve got two or three ongoing insurance investigations, none of them more pressing than Christmas shopping right now. I’m available. You’ve paid me. I’m going to try to locate your daughter. And the truth is, it would be convenient to stay at the beach house if it’s not a bother.”
“It’s not at all.”
“I’ll go down first thing in the morning.”
“Thank you for being honest with me and for not guilt-tripping me.”
“I did, though,” I said. “Now how are you going to feel firing me?”
I liked hearing her laugh. Something told me she hadn’t been doing it much lately. She said she’d call the realtor, Mitzi Dineen, and make the arrangements. In the meantime, maybe Ben and Shelly would show up and none of this would be necessary. I said I hoped so.
As I got ready to go, my neighbor from the suite down the hall stopped by. In his way, Fred Meecham, and his Mount Holyoke graduate paralegal, Courtney, gave the building a tincture of class it had no right to expect any longer. Its heyday had been a hundred years ago. Now, with the likes of Acme Telephone Sales, a smoking-cessation hypnotist, World Wide Pawn, and assorted other two-bit operations, including yours truly, an ambulance chaser would have fit right in; but Meecham wasn’t that. He was a hardworking, bright, reasonably honest attorney, whose specialty, like mine, was anything that came through the door. Occasionally he even threw work my way, though Courtney was on top of most of it. We’d been neighbors on the third floor for years, and yet, in all that time of breathing the same dusty air, sharing the same washroom down the hall, we had never become buddies. Never would. He possessed a bit too much of the city booster, I-care-what-people-think spirit—but I liked him. Lately he was on this kick to advertise—my services, not his. In his view, advertising was for the kind of lawyer who used fall-down artists, but a PI on the other hand … Maybe he thought more business rolling my way would roll more business his way. Maybe he was a genuine altruist, and it pained him to hear the silence of my telephone and not see a line outside my waiting room. Whatever the case, I liked him fine.
“Hey,” he said. He was ruddy from an afternoon at the city golf tournament.
“Who won?” I asked.
“It’s not like that. There’re two more days of rounds. The final round is on Friday. You should come out with me.”
“I’ll let you know next week.”
He came in. “Have you been sitting here since this morning?”
Rather than replay my exciting day, I shrugged. He started out and then turned. “I’m telling you, an ad in the newspaper, maybe a TV spot, you could get clients. Have you given any thought to what I said about marketing?”
“Some. How about a big pointing hand in the lobby: ‘Mysteries solved, three floors up’? Or billboards on the Connector: ‘Dial R for Rasmussen.’” He scowled and headed for his office. “Too Hitch-cocky?” I called after him.
I stopped by the Copper Kettle for the bar smorgasbord and some familiar faces, but all the talk was of par and shots under. I got some pickled eggs and kielbasa—the Exxon special—and took them in a plastic container to my apartment, where I cracked open a beer and settled in to watch Gary Cooper and Patricia Neal in The Fountainhead on PBS.
6
On Wednesday I was up early and packed two days’ worth of clothes and essentials. I took my cue from people I’d seen in Standish yesterday—chinos and cotton shirts, a sport coat and a summer-weight suit, and some ties—and left to get ahead of the rush hour. I needn’t have bothered. I didn’t clock sixty until I got past the Needham flats.
The young police officer named Ferry was on duty, sipping his coffee, cinnamon spice, if my nose was right, though his English Leather was in the mix, too. He told me that as far as he knew, neither Ben Nickerson nor his daughter had shown up yet. I drove out to the beach house and confirmed it. My card was still under the door from yesterday. I left it there. Paula Jensen had said she’d make the rental arrangement, so I trusted her on that. An AT&T van was parked across the street, and a lineman—who turned out to be a linewoman, was on the pole. I called up to her and asked if she’d noticed any vehicles at the house; she hadn’t.
I drove a few towns farther south to Plymouth Harbor and, starting there, worked my way back through Duxbury, Marshfield and Scituate. Going on a profile I’d built of Nickerson’s interests, I visited the local PDs, charter fishing places, the whale-watch services and whatever few small-boat rental places still did business. I talked to harbormasters, yacht clubbers and wait-staff. I spoke with a cranberry grower, a lifeguard, and a woman in Pilgrim garb. No one knew anything helpful. I showed the photographs of Michelle Nickerson to kids of her age, one of whom wore a Satan Bugg T-shirt, which I commented on. It didn’t forge any bond; the youth just seemed dismayed that I’d ever heard of the band.
I made a ph
one call to Mitzi Dineen, the realtor I’d tried to see yesterday. I dropped Paula Jensen’s name and left word that I’d be at the beach house at 2 P.M. I also kept an eye out for a blue Grand Cherokee with California plates. At ten minutes to two I got back to the house on Cliff Beach. My card remained tucked under the door, so I retrieved it. I poked around outside, looking for something I hadn’t even thought to look for earlier: signs of forcible entry. I saw none. I went and leaned against my car.
At 2 P.M. sharp, a green Saab wagon with an “I Standish” bumper sticker wheeled into the parking area and braked with a shushing of crushed clamshells. A suntanned middle-aged woman in a tropical-flower–print dress bustled out. “Hi, Mr. Rasmussen? Here I am.” Grinning, she thrust a hand at me. “Mitzi Dineen.” She had blonde-streaked hair cut in a youthful fashion. She was fifty, trying to look thirty and splitting the difference. “So you’re the lucky one! Mrs. Jensen called and explained that you’d be using the place for a few days. Mr. Nickerson hasn’t returned?”
“Apparently not.”
“You’re gonna love it here. Everyone does. Everyone.” She sounded insistent about it, as if I’d picked up the wrong idea somehow and needed to be set straight. “Standish is the best location on the South Shore. One of the best anywheres!”
You can take them out of South Boston, but the accent stays and stays. “You’re gonna absolutely positively adore it.” She dug in a wicker pocketbook and produced a ring of keys that would’ve given a jail warden penal envy. “Here we go.”
We stepped into a summer home with shiny wood floors, drapery-drawn windows and modest furnishings. “We’re in the family room,” she said with a little Vanna White twirl. “There’s the Atlantic out there. What do you think so far?”
“I absolutely positively adore it.”
She gave me the tour.
“Did you see Ben Nickerson and his daughter when they came?” I asked when we got downstairs again and she paused for breath.
“What? Oh. I spoke with him by phone, actually. He called from California. He sounded excited to be coming. I was out on caravan the morning they arrived, so I left a key. Once people settle in, I’m invisible unless they need me. I did tell Vin that Mr. Nickerson would be here. I always do that, just to keep him in the loop. It’s an added safety service, no extra charge.”
“Vin?”
“Police Chief Delcastro. He’s ‘Vin’ to us locals. He’s a native. There aren’t all that many. Sadly, a lot of them can no longer afford the taxes and have to move elsewhere.” Her sympathy seemed as genuine as a crocodile’s. “We get people from all over who move to town. ‘Wash-ashores.’ Goodness, I’m one!” She laughed.
“Delcastro knew Ben Nickerson from before, I gather.”
“Years ago, yes. That’s another nice thing about the town—have you got a family, Mr. Rasmussen? Kids?”
“Not at the moment.”
“Well. It is a very safe town with good public services. And the schools are tops. We’re back in the kitchen now.” The woman liked to announce where she was and what she was doing, I guess in case it was happening so fast that my head was awhirl. She brimmed with perkiness—almost too much for the house, which had a closed-up feel, almost without any sign of recent habitation. She tugged a cord and opened draperies on the large sliding-glass door. Beyond was a deck overlooking the beach. Wanting fresh air, I slid open the door. The cries of seagulls drifted in, along with the smells of burning charcoal, and of the ocean itself. It was slightly cooler here than inland. I walked to the railing and looked down onto the strip of clean sand. Only a few people were in evidence, most of them parked on blankets, catching rays.
“What did I tell you?” Mitzi Dineen beamed at my side.
“You sure did.” I beamed back. We went inside and she went on extolling the virtues of Standish, but I was peering about, looking for some enlarged understanding of where Ben and Michelle Nickerson might be. I wasn’t offended when the realtor apologized that she had to be running off to another appointment. She tugged a key from her ring and gave it to me. “The beach comes with the rental. The one rule here is, relax and enjoy! And if you fall in love with us and want to stay … Well, I’m off.” She trilled a laugh all the way to the Saab.
Alone, I brought my suitcase in and took my own tour. The house was what you’d expect: durable appliances and housewares, decorator touches, an assortment of books and board games for rainy days, but the overall effect was of a temple for beach worshipers. Skylights and big windows let the light pour in. There wasn’t much that didn’t seem to belong. Some condiments and tubs of Chinese take-out in the fridge. On a kitchen counter was a fishbowl, but I didn’t see any fish in the water, only a small snail shell in the sand at the bottom. In an upstairs closet hung a black satin jacket. I took it out. “Satan Bugg—Playing for Your Soul Tour” was printed on the back in red, along with the band’s pentagram logo. The tour cities were all West Coast venues. Was it Michelle Nickerson’s? In a wastebasket, amid some balled local newspapers, I found a roach with purple lipstick on it. Had the teenager smoked it? For people who supposedly had been here for several days, the Nickersons hadn’t left much of themselves. Was it possible they’d taken their things and gone on a side trip? The jacket, though, seemed to deny it. If it was Michelle’s—the size was right—and she was such a fan of the group, would she leave it behind if she didn’t intend to return?
“Eagle eye has landed,” I said when Paula Jensen answered the phone.
“Anything?” she asked right off.
Which told me she hadn’t heard a word. I took forty seconds and filled her in on my day so far. I held off on the roach for the moment. She said that the Standish police had faxed her a missing persons form to complete, which she was doing now and was going to fax it back. She said the jacket sounded like her daughter’s.
“Does she wear purple lipstick?”
“I’ve never seen her. Black, sometimes. Why?”
“Just curious.” No need to air my vague wonderings about her daughter’s smoking dope. “You spoke to Delcastro for the first time when?” I asked.
“The day before yesterday.”
“How did he react to learn Ben was in Standish?”
“He seemed matter-of-fact about it. He did give me the impression that he thought I was being premature about this.”
We talked a minute more and agreed to be in touch immediately if either of us learned anything. I thanked her again for arranging the use of the house. Back in Standish center, I noted there were lots of vehicles with out-of-state plates. Still, if Nickerson’s Jeep was around, it shouldn’t be too hard to spot. I walked around in the heat shimmer, looking, when someone said, “Hi, there.”
It was the young cop again, Ferry. He was on a foot patrol. Beneath the mesh front of his blue baseball cap, his brow glistened. I asked him if he’d recommend someplace for a late lunch. Before he could say, a gray van with “Point Pines Development” and a pine-tree logo painted on the door in red and green went past.
“That’s the outfit building the new golf course out on Shawmut Point,” Ferry told me. “Eventually, it’ll also include that whole stretch out there on the breakwater—a new marina, shops, restaurants.”
“I can’t wait that long. I’m hungry now.”
“Dimitri’s is good,” he said seriously. “Though that’s best in the evening. Try the Storm Warning, right over there.” He indicated a small wooden building near the base of the jetty, by a big rusted anchor.
“The name’s no commentary on the food, I trust?”
“No, sir. It’s just a—” This time he caught on and grinned.
The wait-staff wore yellow oilskin hats, and the menus were carved on oar blades, but the food was good anyway. As I ate a clam roll, I noticed a person standing alone far out on the granite jetty where Point Pines would evidently transfigure the town. Something in his stillness as he stood gazing at the horizon under the flat of his hand, drew me. After a few moments, he went
down the far side of the jetty and was gone.
After eating, I scanned the square for a public booth, but I might as well have looked for a white whale. I got my cellular phone from the car and called the Coast Guard station in Scituate Harbor. An efficient-sounding guardsman told me my call was being recorded and took my questions. “No, sir, no one by those names has been rescued, and there’ve been no accidents reported at all in the past forty-eight hours. Are you reporting them overdue or missing, sir?”
Was I? “No, I just wanted to be sure. Thanks for your help.”
“We’re here to serve, sir. Thank you.”
I called the Lowell Police Department and asked for Ed St. Onge. “Who’s this?” a woman asked sharply.
“John Updike,” I said.
“The baseball player? Oh, sorry, I didn’t realize you knew Ed. He’s not in right now. Take a message?”
“No, thanks.” If Francis X. Droney was as interested in my doings as St. Onge had hinted, I wasn’t going to make it easy. I said I’d try again.
The woman cleared her throat. “I0f I may ask, how’s your season going, John?”
“Read my latest and see.” I hung up, dug out my notebook, and called the number for Ben Nickerson’s marine supply company. It would be noon in California. After a few rings, a machine picked up. A man’s recorded voice said, “South Coastal Marine Supply will be closed for vacation until July twentieth. Leave a message and we’ll get back to you.” I left my name and phone number and asked Ben Nickerson to call me about a personal matter.
I headed back to the beach house to see if Nickerson and his daughter had returned. If they had, I was going to take the afternoon off and walk the beach. Some of the women in town were looking good in their suntans. My social life of late had been about as hot as Norma Desmond’s. Of course, I didn’t have the wax museum to play in or Erich von Stroheim at my beck and call. Still, that was okay. Lowell’s Red Sox farm team was playing pretty good ball, and a night in the stadium with a hot dog and a beer was my speed. The Spinners didn’t win any more games than their parent club, but then the players weren’t earning twice the GNP of Pakistan, either. But all of that was moot; the Nickersons hadn’t returned.
