AHMM, October 2008

by Dell Magazine Authors

  But even though I was utterly spent—physical labor having a way of numbing both the mind and the body—I went out to Manamesset Beach each day after work. I stood up on the seawall or walked along the water's edge as far as the battered remnants of Old South Jetty. It was a cold, wet, ragged sort of April vacation and most the houses were still closed up. But in a few there were signs of life: a carpenter installing new windows, a tree crew removing some diseased oaks, a pair of roofers laying down shingle on an older house. There was even the sporadic appearance of cleaning vans with company names painted on them.

  Of course, I saw all this through sort of a haze, aware as I played music under my hood that time could weave and drift in astonishing patterns when one was...

  Well, I liked the way Amy had described it: "...just makes things better."

  I wasn't addicted. I'd spread out the remaining pills over a couple of weeks; there were now five left. It didn't matter; when they were gone, they were gone.

  * * * *

  I rose to my feet off the broken rocks of Old South Jetty and stared across the expanse of beach up toward Long Jetty. Long Jetty had been built to protect the Manamesset River, a river that was vital to the area and its economy, as it supported numerous private and public docks, as well as several prestigious marinas. As a result, Long Jetty was meticulously maintained and was rebuilt after every storm.

  But Old South Jetty had long ago been left to the waves and wind, the storms, tides, and natural currents. In its present condition, Old South did little more than define the southern edge of the thin strip of beach between the two jetties. About twenty vintage cottages sat above the beach's man-made seawall, most of them now dark, with their window shades drawn. These were the summer homes of more than twenty different families who passed the houses down through the generations. This was Briarwood, where houses built and sold for less than a thousand dollars apiece sixty years ago were now worth upwards of a million dollars each.

  The solid rhythms of industrial technical music rocked in my brain as I tried, perhaps through sheer will alone, to reason out how it had happened. No, not how. How didn't matter suddenly. How was this: she had fallen off the jetty, the scrapes on her hands and knee attesting to that. She had fallen into the frigid waters and drowned. Her body probably had been submerged about a day, maybe two, before the natural buoyancy of body fat and the gases accompanying decomposition brought her back to the surface. The police and a state forensics team had been all over Long Jetty, all over the beach, and had even dragged the area for more clues, more evidence.

  So the “how” was understood, the basic mechanics of her death known. It was the “why” that was still absent. And not why she had died or fallen into the water. There were a dozen possible explanations to that. Children do things for which there are often no reasonable explanations. They go outside to play; they go where it isn't safe, where their curiosity pulls them like a great magnet. Tell them, don't go play on the jetty, then turn your back for a minute, and there they are, on the damn jetty.

  The “why” that wasn't answered was this: Why hadn't someone reported her missing? Where had her parents been? The story had been reported statewide and even on the national news programs, and though the police said dozens of inquiries had been made, no match had been made between the child with the long dark hair pulled from Manamesset Bay and the parents who lost her.

  Why not?

  I popped one of the five remaining pills into my mouth, then figured I'd make a phone call.

  * * * *

  "Nope, no, Herbie,” Jed Porter told me almost cheerfully on the phone. “There's a couple of staties assigned to it now, and some dudes out of the county DA's office, but they've come up with zero, zilch, nada ... Nothing."

  "Dudes,” I echoed, shaking my head. It was Thursday night, and I was at Mr. Hornton's house again. The Wenlows were less than thrilled that I'd stayed to share fried clams and onion rings with my old friend, but I couldn't care less what they thought.

  "Yeah...” Jed went on, “We're officially off the case, unless someone comes in with new information, and knowing that area, it isn't too likely. Anyhow, all we can do is pass info along.” Jed sounded richly disappointed.

  "And have you?” I asked.

  "Have we what?” Jed asked, and then he laughed and said, “No, except I did bring in the telephone book lady, but they just listened, said thank you, and sent her on her way."

  I had shut my eyes, felt a part of me saying, Let it go tonight. Go watch the ball game and fall asleep on the couch.

  "What ... is a telephone book lady?” I heard myself asking, though it was just an automatic response.

  "A telephone book lady?” I could almost hear Jed shrug. “Well, they deliver telephone books. You know how I mean? One of those people who throws your phone book on the front steps where it sits in the rain for a week before you notice it."

  I sat up straight as Elmer Hornton swore at the TV set; he was watching the Red Sox. “I know what you mean,” I said. “What did this ... telephone book lady have to say?"

  "Well, that she was delivering on Briarwood last week and she saw a woman crying, but she wasn't sure of the day. She couldn't remember the house either, or much about it."

  "A woman crying?” I looked down at the ancient, push-button phone, and asked Jed, “Any way I can talk to her, Jed?"

  * * * *

  It was the following day, Friday, and I'd never seen a woman move and twitch so much as this one.

  "I don't know why I bothered to go to the police,” Mindy Marker said. She was struggling to hold onto the large white Persian cat in her arms. There was another cat curling around her ankles, and more in her cluttered trailer. There were cats and trash, cats and magazines, cats and empty fast food containers everywhere.

  "I just thought, well maybe, oh who knows...” She twisted her arms back and forth, her shoulders trembled. In the cramped living room, Jed and I sat on the edge of a wrinkled couch that obviously doubled as a bed. She released the cat at last—or it released her—and it flew into the air, across the room, and into my lap.

  It was filthy; it smelled of urine, but there it was, in my lap.

  I felt pretty good, though, amazed at the fact that I was here on sheer curiosity. I picked up the animal and held it to my chest, then looked at the woman who, as Jed had explained to me beforehand, had Parkinson's disease. “That's probably why she wasn't taken seriously,” he'd said, “but that doesn't mean she hasn't got a brain and doesn't notice things. Mindy takes care of herself and accepts help from anybody, and she came into the station to try to be helpful, but they gave her barely two minutes of their time."

  "...Well, I had about twenty phone books left,” Mindy was saying, “so I must have been near the end of Rollins Road, just going onto Briarwood—"

  "Twenty books,” I muttered to myself.

  "—And I saw her crying, so I stopped.” Her speech was as erratic as her body movements, but I didn't see her body, strangely enough, although it was there, moving, jerking, twisting. “And I said, hey, how are you, and can I be of help? Because I feel we're all put on God's green earth to be of service to one another."

  "Do you have records of your deliveries?” I interjected politely.

  "Well, just a check-off sheet, address, and date and how much I get. I get more when I deliver rural, you know, and I do go up to each door, but in that part of town, nobody answers."

  "Did she—this crying woman—answer a door?"

  "She was outside the house by the side door. No one answered the front.... Now I remember—” Mindy frowned. “She had her hands on her face, so I asked if I could help, and then this fella came out and said, no, no, she's okay, and so I went back to my car. But I heard them talking, and they weren't talking English. The lady was real upset. I told those detectives—” She jerked her head toward Jed. “—I told them they were speaking Spanish or something, but they just said thank you and sent me away.” She suddenly leaned forward a
nd looked intently at me “My kitty likes you, young man."

  "You were on Briarwood Road?” Jed asked. “Do you know the address where you saw this woman?"

  "I don't remember, as I told them. But I do know I had twenty books left in my car.” She looked at me and then at Jed. “They're tied up in piles of ten and I had two piles left. I was near the end of my route. They didn't ask how many books I had left."

  "Can we see your records?” I asked.

  * * * *

  I counted back twenty books, and then started writing down the addresses of the houses Mindy delivered phone books to, which brought me to Thursday, April sixteenth.

  About forty minutes later I was standing on Briarwood Road, the list in my hand and the sounds of gothic metal ricocheting against my neck. I blinked my eyes a couple of times because I had an uncanny sense of being here before, but then, that was a feeling I'd been living with for the last few months. In fact, it occurred to me then that I wasn't even sure what day...

  "It's perfectly safe; it just makes things better."

  I reached in my jeans pocket, wound my fingers around the foil packet. Four left.

  There were eighteen houses up on the seawall overlooking North Manamesset Beach. Eighteen houses.

  Now I had to figure which one to break into.

  * * * *

  In the end it was fairly easy. The massive late Victorian had been the only house without a phone book on the grass or the steps. As for getting in, I'd used the same trick I had at my own house: I cut the edge of a screen on the porch overlooking the beach. Now I was sitting at a freshly polished rolltop desk—I could still smell the lemon-scented cleaner used on it—in a room which had been converted into some kind of study.

  Yes, quite a nice room, up on the second floor, overlooking the beach, the bay, the two jetties at either end of the beach. The room had all new windows, a skylight, and a brand-new telescope to gawk at people down on the beach. Heck, it was obvious this owner had money by the way the hardwood floors were gleaming, and the bookcases and every knickknack on them were polished.

  I was fairly certain that this was the house where Mindy Marker had seen the crying woman, and with a leap from that one assumption to the fantastic ... that she might also be the same woman I'd seen arguing with the man at the water's edge last Saturday.

  I needed that woman's name, and the only people who could possibly supply me with that were the owners of this house. Information, possibly, they had withheld from the police.

  So I sat and thought for a few minutes. I looked around at the perfect—almost too perfect—Cape Cod surroundings: a harpoon on a wall, some mosaics made from sea glass, some freshly polished lanterns on hooks along the rustic, gray-colored wood paneling. Barnboard?

  I got up and walked over to the wall and ran my hand along it. It was rough, worn, authentic. Then a light went on, even in my foggy brain: real barnboard walls, the harpoon, and the lanterns gleaming against the wall. I looked back at the rolltop desk. It was old, expensive, antique.

  Everything here was absolutely authentic. Not a reproduction among them, including a glass case with a few items of scrimshaw and some handmade kaleidoscopes. These people had gone to great lengths to create a decorator-perfect Cape Cod summer home.

  I suddenly knew how to make the owners tell me what I wanted to know.

  * * * *

  "Yes, ma'am, everyone says I have a young-sounding voice,” I said on the phone. I was turning the business card which I'd found in the rolltop desk in my fingers. “But we're calling you about—"

  She cut me off, sounding stern, correct, and every ounce the up-and-coming young lawyer she was. Worked at a huge Boston firm. Time was important to her, didn't I understand that? And hadn't she, and her husband, also a lawyer with a very old, very prominent firm just north of Boston, already answered all the Manamesset Police Department's questions? What could be so important—

  I turned in Mr. Hornton's recliner, mindful that the shower was still going in his bathroom. I'd grabbed a ride off one of his friends, who dropped me at the nearby corner convenience store. In the parking lot, I'd stolen a cell phone off the passenger seat of an unlocked pickup truck. The owner would notice his phone missing and disconnect it any minute now, so I had to talk fast.

  My turn to cut her off, so politely maple sugar would have melted in my mouth. “This is a different matter, ma'am. We think there might have been a robbery at your house on Briarwood. We've taken the liberty of driving over there just now, and we can see no signs of forced entry, however we have recovered...” I looked at the fancy kaleidoscope next to Mr. Hornton's ancient phone, “Some items that we think might have come from your home, including several pieces of scrimshaw."

  That saying about hearing a person's jaw drop was pretty true because I heard a clunk. Maybe it was her jaw, maybe she just dropped something in her fancy lawyer's office.

  "Oh my God, a break-in? I told Bob we needed a security system on that house!"

  "Didn't say a break-in, ma'am,” I went on, oozing syrup that could have covered a stack of pancakes. “We believe whoever went into your house—if indeed these items are yours—might have had a key, so if you could tell me if any of the following items—"

  "Key!” she gasped over my voice as I recited a list of items.

  "A Jason telescope, several antique lanterns, a whale harpoon...” I intended to name practically every item that a Mr. or Mrs. Stevens, esquires both, might esteem to have some value.

  She suddenly blurted out: “Oh my God, I told Bob not to hire those people!"

  "What people, Mrs. Stevens?” I said, realizing I had to catch her in her highest moment of distress.

  "Um ... oh, just a housekeeping service,” she muttered. “My husband and I will be down to the station as fast as we can, Officer ... I didn't catch your name?"

  "We don't seem to have the name of this service,” I said gently, softly. There was silence on the other end, so I said, “Mrs. Stevens?"

  I settled back in the recliner, took a breath. Mr. Hornton was still in the bathroom; I could hear him swear and the sound of his walker banging against something.

  "Mrs. Stevens?” I repeated.

  "Well, I have just a phone number. I'm sure Robert mentioned this earlier when you were inquiring about that little girl and—"

  I cut her off, “Well, perhaps these items aren't yours,” I said, holding my breath. “Did I mention we also recovered a kaleidoscope with the inscription: ‘To Bob, with love from Meg?’”

  * * * *

  The cell phone was still working so I quickly placed another call and told the voice on the other end what I wanted, the address of my house, and said that the door would be left open. There was a pause, so I added, “We want the same woman who did the Stevens place on Briarwood. They've highly recommended her. They say she did an exceptional job."

  I heard the suspicion in his heavily accented voice as he echoed, “The Stevenses?"

  "Look, we're in a hurry. We need the house cleaned so we can show it to a prospective buyer tomorrow afternoon. You'll see our sign on the side lawn. We're prepared to pay above your regular rate."

  I seem to have said the right combination of words because his whole tone changed as he said, “Seven o'clock tomorrow morning. We'll be there."

  After I hung up, I walked to the end of Mr. Hornton's road, out to the end of the boat landing there, and threw the cell phone in the water.

  * * * *

  I leaned against a tree and watched from across the street in the fog as the small van pulled up. It was white, rusted in the back, and from it emerged a woman and a small girl with dark hair twisted into two neat braids. I wished I had a cigarette, but I settled for the foil packet in my jeans pocket. I chugged the pill down with the coke I'd taken out of Mr. Hornton's fridge.

  She was small, dark haired, maybe late twenties to early thirties. She wore a sweat suit and dark raincoat and carried a bucket in one hand, a plastic bag in the other. Clea
ning supplies. The bare-legged child had on a little orange rain slicker; she must have been wearing a dress or skirt.

  And as I stood there, I marveled on how simple things were when you dragged yourself down to the most basic, banal level you possibly could. I knew that level, knew it was almost subterranean. I had no doubt, watching her walk carefully up to my house, pausing to study the FOR SALE sign, which I had taken off a different property up the street, complete with the message that there was to be a “Special Showing Today"—that this was the woman I had seen on the beach. Most likely this was also the woman Mindy Marker had seen crying the day she was delivering phone books.

  I blinked as the effect started to kick in and I felt nervous, trembled. Though not all the details were falling into place as easily as I'd hoped. For one thing, I'd seen the woman, the man, and the two kids the afternoon of Saturday, April eighteenth, and the child had been in the water since at least Thursday, according to the autopsy report. So maybe that child and these people weren't connected after all...

  It didn't matter. I could sort out the details later—or Jake could. I just knew this was her, the woman who had cleaned the Stevens place on Briarwood Road, the woman whom Mrs. Stevens—or her husband—hadn't told the police about.

  But what I wasn't sure of was whether this was the woman, now walking toward the house with a small child in tow, who hadn't reported her missing daughter to the police.

  I crossed the street and followed her up the stairs into my house.

  * * * *

  There was a moment where everything came back into focus, like a burst of clarity, starting at the back of my brain, then shooting forward and centering behind my eyes. I was on the jetty again, listening to my music, headphones on, hood up over my head, and I was looking toward the beach.

  An empty beach last Saturday. No one had been there. Not her, this small, rather frail-looking woman who was pushing the light switch on the wall up and down, up and down. She heard me and spun around.