by David Daniel
He headed back to the car. The cop at the wheel was watching me, had been the whole time, his big arm on the windowsill. I couldn’t see his eyes behind the mirrors of his sunglasses. It was fine with me.
8
I drove out to Route 3 and down one exit to the Hanover Mall. The Wide World of Sporting Goods was a supermarket for jocks and jockettes. I found the windsurfing and surfboards section without a road map. It was full of fluorescent shorts and hats, wet suits and sandals. Except for one board on display, there wasn’t a surfboard in sight. Nor was the music coming from ceiling speakers the Beach Boys. It sounded closer to the stuff Michelle Nickerson listened to. A few other customers milled around eyeballing merchandise. Hanging on the wall behind the sales counter was a section of old shipworm-eaten plank, charred on the ends and painted with a curling wave and the logo Ride a Legend. Amid the Formica, stainless steel and fluorescence, it looked as out of place as a lizard in a candy dish. A slim salesclerk drifted my way. She wore tiny amber-tint eyeglasses and a tie-dyed T-shirt that clung to her thin chest. She could have been eighteen or thirty. “Help you?”
“Is Chet Van Owen around?”
“Chet?” Her eyebrows arched.
“I was told he works here.”
“Red Dog, yeah. He’s not on now.”
“Do you know when he will be? Or where I might find him?”
“He’s probably at Coast Guard.”
“Where?”
“Down the Cape.”
“He’s in the Coast Guard?”
“It’s a beach. He surfs there.”
“Oh. Any idea when he’ll be back?”
“When the wind stops. When the spirit moves him.” She had a cute, spacey grin. “When he realizes he’s an old man in a kids’ game and he’s crossed the line from poverty to destitution. It’s random.” She shrugged her lean shoulders and consulted a sheet of paper taped to the wall. “He’s scheduled to work tomorrow evening, but I’m not promising, and you shouldn’t hold your breath. Excuse me one sec?” She stepped over to assist a woman with a lot of brassy blonde hair who was looking at sunglasses, but she said she was just browsing. The clerk came back to me. As if a glimmer from a customer-service briefing occurred to her, she said, “Is there anything I can help you with?”
“I’m looking for someone Van Owen may have known—a guy who grew up in Standish. Ben Nickerson.”
“Mmm, can’t help you there. You want to like leave a message for Red Dog?”
Not convinced he’d get it, I wrote the address of the beach house on the back of one of my cards, along with the message: “Would like to talk to you about Ben Nickerson.” The girl said she was likely to misplace it; why didn’t I put it right on Red Dog’s workbench. She led me through a door underneath the charred wood plank into a back room, more shed than showroom, with a high industrial ceiling and a concrete floor. The air was raw with the smell of fiberglass resin. Along the outer wall, surfboards stood in vertical rows. There must’ve been forty of them in different shapes and sizes. Nearby, across a pair of sawhorses, lay a surfboard in the process of being repaired or built. On the deck of the board was a sun face with rays coming off and the name Sunshine Superman.
“It’s hot, huh? I don’t surf,” the clerk said, “but if I did, I’d want that puppy.”
“Do you make them here?”
“All those are factory stock.” She dismissed the vertical boards with a wave. “These custom sticks, though—that’s what Red Dog does.” She stepped over to several sleek white boards. “He used to have his own shop, but it burned down, so he works here now. When he works.” She sighed. “I’m not knocking him. He’s a wave slave, what can I tell you?” Her tone had the same grudging admiration for the guy that Ferry’s had.
One of the boards had a red pentagram on it, similar in design to the Satan Bugg logo. The name on the board was Deep Sea Ryder. “Is that one of his creations?”
“Oh, yeah. They’re all originals—instant classics. Ride a Legend is his brand.” She went over to the worktable and picked up a clipboard. As she clamped my card to it, she riffled through pages of paper for a moment, stopping to examine one. “What was that name you asked me before if I knew him?”
“Ben Nickerson.”
“‘B. Nickerson,’” she read. “Hmm, same person?”
I looked.
“If so,” she said, “that Deep Sea Ryder is his. He ordered it.”
“Does it say when?”
“Three sixteen. When’s that … March? There’s a phone number.” She turned the clipboard for me to see. “I don’t know this exchange.”
I did, but I checked to be sure. I had the same number in my notebook. Paula Jensen had given it to me. “It’s near San Diego. What does the rest of that mean?”
She scanned the sheet again. “Dimensions. Is he small? I can tell by this it’s for someone like my height and weight. It’s being held for pickup on … hmm. Supposed to be two days ago.”
Outside, I already had the key in the ignition when I saw the writing on my windshield: “em llac” and some numbers. The words and numbers were backward but I could read them. Even so, I got out and looked around to see who might have put them there, but I saw no one. They were written in lipstick. Something about the message was familiar.
I fetched my cell phone and dialed the number. After several rings a peppy-sounding female voice I didn’t know said, “Hi, can’t talk right now, but the machine can put us in touch. Do your thing after the beep.” Which took forever to come. I gave my name and location. “You left a note on my car. I’ll try again later.”
I jotted the number into my pocket notebook, then used my handkerchief and wiped the lipstick away.
At the beach house I called my service and picked up messages. Bob Whitaker at the Sun had called me back. I tried him but was told he was out on a shoot. I got The Torch, the yearbook that Paula had brought. In the pages of photographs, where classmates had scrawled communiqués of naive hope and false sincerity on their likenesses, relatively few had written anything for Ben Nickerson—mostly fellow members of the Key and biology clubs and the band. On a thought I flipped ahead to the R’s, and there was Theodore “TJ” Rand.
Rand was a handsome kid, with an expression that seemed at once serious and sincere, innocent and full of knowledge. It was a look that promised success in school—and maybe in life, too. He had his father’s curly hair. The list of activities by his name was long: football, baseball, basketball all three years, class president, high honor roll, to name but a few. His future included Dartmouth College, and, opined the editors, “big things!” Next to his own picture, he had inscribed: “To Ben—I hope you find a beach without footprints, so you can leave your own. Good luck in the future. TJ.”
Contrasted with the pap most of their classmates had turned out, it was a surprisingly fresh expression. Taking another shot, I flipped forward to the V’s, and there was Chet Van Owen. “Red Dog.” In the black-and-white portrait, he had thick, sun-bleached hair and a faintly menacing look. Like Rand, he had been an athlete—football and track—but there were no academic honors, nor other signs of school involvement, and no predictions of future success. In the line where grads projected a career for themselves, he had written “chase waves.” He hadn’t signed Ben Nickerson’s yearbook.
I pondered a moment the fact of these three names, two of which I hadn’t even known until a few hours ago, orbiting in the same little solar system. And yet, why should that be a surprise? In Lowell, where graduating classes ran to the thousands, it might have been more coincidence than possibility could bear; here, in a small town, it added up. I called Nickerson’s California number again. When the voice mail message came on, I left my name and number once more. On a hunch, I retrieved the roach I’d recovered from a wastebasket that morning. I laid it on my handkerchief, next to the smudged lipstick stain from my windshield. Either that shade of purple was a summer hit, or the same person had left both. I dialed that phone n
umber again and got the same brisk message. I repeated myself. It seemed to be all I was doing.
Sunshine and sea air had made me sleepy, so I lay on the living room couch for just a moment. The phone woke me. Outside, dusk was inking the sky. “Mr. Rasmussen?” a young woman asked. “Can we talk?”
I swallowed the dust in my throat. “Let’s. Who’s this?”
“I overheard you asking about someone at the sports store today.”
“Chet Van Owen,” I said.
“Ben Nickerson. I wrote the note on your windshield.” She had to have been the young woman looking at sunglasses, but I had only an impression of hair. “I’d like to talk with you.”
“Go ahead, Ms.—?”
“No, I mean like in person. Maybe tonight?” Her voice lacked the perky note it had on the answering machine. In fact, it had lowered to a near whisper. “Do you know where the Cliff House is?”
She gave me directions, and we agreed to meet there in half an hour. She said she drove a red Daytona. My detecting powers told me she wore purple lipstick. But I still didn’t know her name.
9
The coast road wound north. I drove with my windows down, breathing the sea air, my senses alert. I believed that to do the job I was being paid to do, there was still a lot I needed to know about Standish, and the time I had to learn it in felt as if it was growing short. Except for one shaky moment, Paula Jensen had been maintaining her composure that afternoon, assuring herself that there was a logical explanation to her daughter’s and her ex-husband’s disappearance, but underneath her surface I sensed she was starting to unravel. Before leaving, I had considered calling her to tell her about the surfboard Ben had ordered; but it didn’t answer any questions yet, and I didn’t want to get her hopes up needlessly. I’d wait at least until after I’d talked with the mystery woman. I wanted to get some solid information to her and her husband before the case became fodder for the TV news.
The Cliff House sat on a rise on the inland side of the winding coastal road. On the opposite side, the land sloped a short distance to low cliffs above the sea. The nightclub was a large old colonial-style place, white with black shutters and a veranda. Tiny white lights twinkled in the ornamental trees, and lamps glowed beyond the screened windows. I drove up the sloping driveway and looped around the busy parking lot looking for a red Daytona but didn’t see it. I parked and got out.
Light jazz floated on the lilac summer evening. People were sitting in wicker chairs on the porch. Nearby, at a big picnic table on the lawn were members of a softball team. They had several rounds of beers sitting before them and were laughing in the jolly way of winners. I recognized the pine-tree logo on the uniform shirts. Evidently, Ted Rand’s local spirit included sponsoring a team.
At the sudden squeal of tires, I looked to see a car turn sharply off the ocean road and come blasting up the drive, music punching from its open windows with the percussive thud of mortar rounds. It was a red Daytona. As it pinged around the parking lot, I walked back and waited for it to come to rest.
A young woman got out, looked around and spotted me. We recognized each other from the brief encounter at the Wide World of Sporting Goods. She was about twenty-five, slender and on the short side, with a lot of brassy-blonde hair teased up and lacquered in a party-girl style, which went with the tight jeans and sleeveless blouse, never mind the dance beat still pummeling from the car. Her breasts made pert shapes in the satiny material. I couldn’t see the shade of her lipstick.
“This isn’t a good idea” were her opening words.
“What isn’t?”
“Us meeting.”
“You suggested it. What did you have in mind?”
“It really isn’t.” She was glancing toward the Cliff House. “At least not out here.”
I wanted to point out that that was her idea, too, and that I hadn’t entered the scene to an orchestral accompaniment, but I said, “Maybe we should get properly introduced. I’m Alex Rasmussen.”
“Jillian,” she said hurriedly.
“Do you want to go inside and get a drink, Jillian? Or talk in the car?”
“No, no.”
“Should we get right to it then?” I was growing impatient with her seeming unwillingness to come clean about anything.
“Okay, the reason I left that—” She broke off. “Oh, shit.”
She was looking past me again, and I followed her gaze. One of the softball players was headed our way. She ducked back into her car and shut off the music. The man was broad-chested, slightly older-looking than some of his teammates, his teeth white in his tanned face, dark shaggy hair hugging his head. “I can’t see this guy right now,” she whispered.
“Trouble?”
“Look, did you pass the lighthouse coming here?”
“I saw it.”
“Let me get rid of him, okay?” She made smoothing motions at her hips, preparing herself. “I’ll meet you there.”
“When?”
“Soon as I can.”
I started toward my car, not looking back, but walking slowly, listening: one of my professional reflexes. “Hey, Caro-line,” the softball player called, drawing out the name, in a way that might have been flirtatious or mocking. Now I did glance back. Caroline? The pair faced each other in an aisle of parked cars with him towering over her. “Long time no see, baby,” he said to her, still grinning.
The lighthouse rose from a grassy bluff at the edge of the continent, squat and white against the coming night. There was a gravel turnout near its base and parking enough for maybe ten cars, most of the spaces filled, the cars silent and dark: couples catching the ever popular submarine races, no doubt. I didn’t blame them. Hell, I was envious; it was that kind of summer evening. I gave them as much space as the small lot would allow and drew in and shut off the motor. The lighthouse had gone the way of most lighthouses along U.S. coasts, turning away the loners and would-be poets who used to people them in favor of mechanical operations. Boston Light was the only one that was still manned, as it has been for almost three hundred years. After ten minutes I began to feel peculiar sitting there alone.
I felt the car before I saw it. When it appeared, it drew in next to me and its lights went out, but not the noise. I fairly expected to see the doors pulsing outward, cartoon fashion, with the beauty-parlor beat. The woman looked over, studying me a moment, as if trying to decide something; then motioned for me to get in the Daytona. I went around and slid into the passenger side bucket. She lowered the volume slightly. The car smelled of cigarette smoke and cosmetics. I still couldn’t figure out whether the driver was pretty or not; she definitely caught the eye. The hair wasn’t the end of it. There was her round face, the full lips glossy with the purple shade I was starting to know so well. It was the same color as that on her long nails, which tapped restlessly on the steering wheel. The nipples of her breasts poked tantalizingly at her blouse.
“Was there any trouble back there?” I asked.
“No, I took care of it. I hope I’m doing the right thing.”
“We’re probably not doing much for the mating rituals of our neighbors. Can we cultivate the art of silence a bit?”
Reluctantly, as if she were forsaking a friend, she shut off the music. “That wasn’t Satan Bugg, by any chance, was it?” I asked.
“What? You think I listen to that garbage?” She frowned and looked outside. “I don’t know if this is such a good idea.”
“Why don’t you tell me what you have in mind,” I said, “and then we can decide.”
She sighed. “I might not be here at all if I hadn’t overheard what you asked that salesgirl today about Ben Nickerson.”
“So you know Nickerson?”
“Hardly at all, really. We met over at Nantasket Beach the other night, both just happened to be there, sitting at the bar. We started talking. I don’t know, maybe he was picking me up.” She flicked her hair, perhaps replaying it in her mind. “It got pretty noisy in there, so he said he had a
beach house in Standish where he was staying and did I want to go see it. I live in Standish, too, so I said okay, and we went.”
“Just the two of you?”
“Who else?”
“Go on.”
“I don’t party with groups of guys, hey.”
“I just meant, was anyone else there at his house?”
“I didn’t see anyone else. Anyway, we took a walk on the beach by the house, then went inside.”
“What did you talk about?”
“Everyday stuff. Work, life. He’s got a successful business.”
“He said that? Successful?”
“Out in California.”
“He didn’t mention his daughter?”
“He said he’d been married once a long time ago and had a girl, yeah.”
“And she wasn’t there at the house?”
“I think I’d remember that. Why? What’s this about? He still married or something?”
“No. What about his business, Jillian? Did he say what he did?”
“He told me he was like some kind of crab.”
“That he was a crab?”
“That’s outgrown its shell and he was gonna move into a fancier one.”
“A hermit crab.”
“I guess. Crabs I don’t care about. That wasn’t the focus of us getting together.”
“What was? Do you know?”
“Duh.”
I grinned.
“We met at the Sand Bar, like I said. It’s right on the strip at Nantasket Beach. He bought me a drink. We liked each other’s company.”
I couldn’t readily picture Ben Nickerson picking her up; it didn’t seem to be a knack the man possessed. Though, what did I know? His line had worked with a woman as lovely as Paula Jensen. My information was all secondhand. “Now, how about you?” she asked. “Do you know him?”
