by Linda Barnes
“Tourists,” I said.
“They pay the bills, God love ’em. Summers, we stock those rubber-soled beach shoes and all kind of suntan lotion. What they pay for tubes of goo, you wouldn’t believe. I used to race around the whole summer, brown as an Indian. No cancer scares then. Scare you into buying anything now.”
“You grew up here?” I stretched, trying to get the drive out of my spine. It was warm in the store and I liked the old-fashioned smell, wooden boards and dust and peppermint.
“Good a place as any.”
“Prettier than most,” I said. “What’s with Proposition Six?”
“That’s just what I’m talking about, why it’s not so quiet. Demonstrations and stink bombs and egg tossing, that’s not quiet like it used to be.” He shrugged his narrow shoulders and started ringing up my purchases, plus the gas. “You don’t live around here, do you? You lived here, I’d a seen you at the meetings. You’d be on our side, too. You don’t look like an Indian, not with that pretty red hair.”
“How much for the candy?”
“Hey, don’t be thinking I’m prejudiced or nothing. They want to live here and pay taxes, fine. They want to set up their own damn country, let ’em do it somewhere else.”
I smiled. “Weren’t they here first?”
He pursed his thin lips. “You one of those? Think we should all go jump in the ocean after living here—what?—four hundred years or more? You always got your losers and your winners, right? What I say is you don’t change the rules in the middle of the game.”
“Which rules?”
“Weren’t for the gambling nobody’d give a damn. Live cheek by jowl, and now they want a separate country, and nobody can tell me it’s ’cause they want to exercise tribal customs. Who’s keeping them from their tribal customs, huh? Not me.”
“Is this about the Wampanoag tribe?” The Cape Cod Wampanoag was recently recognized by the federal government as an officially sanctioned tribe. It made a brief splash in the Boston newspapers.
“No, no, that’s in Mashpee.” He said it like Mashpee was hundreds of miles away instead of the next town over. “They got it all sorted out there. Nobody’s gonna build no casino in Mashpee. I’m talking about the Nausetts.”
I shrugged. I’d never heard of them.
He made a face, and started winding up like he was going to give a Sunday sermon.
“I’m looking for somebody,” I said quickly.
“Sure you are. Nobody wants to hear an old goat rant. Anyhow it’s all in Proposition Six. Vote’s coming up in a special election, but if you don’t live here, I’m not gonna bother you with it. What address you want?”
“That’s the problem.” I put the photo on the counter along with money for the Pepsi, candy bar, and gasoline. As he took the bills, I angled the photo so he could see it better.
“He live near here?”
“You know him?”
“Don’t look familiar. What’s his name?”
“He look like anybody you know? He ever come in here?”
He shook his head. “Some folks go to the big stores in Falmouth. Never come by here.”
“He drives a silver Volvo. Maybe he stopped for gas.”
“Maybe he did, but I couldn’t say.”
Gas station attendants used to be a reliable source of gossip. I regretted the self-serve pump, unwrapped the candy bar on the way out, took too big a bite, and got caramel stuck in my teeth. The candy bar was stale.
Most of the stores I passed had placards stuck in the windows saying yea or nay on Proposition 6. Several of the pro-Prop 6 signs were ripped or partially defaced by red paint or anti-6 signs. I slowed to read the billboard in front of a white-steepled Congregational church.
LIE DOWN WITH THE DEVIL, it said. GAMBLING AND OUR COMMUNITY. I missed the date of the sermon, but this time my balky subconscious automatically supplied the rest of the saying: “Lie down with the devil and wake up in darkness.” I wouldn’t have to attend the service to know the Congregationalist minister’s take on gambling.
I tried a bank, a bar, and a real estate agency with no luck. I drove down residential streets, staring at cars parked at the curb or in driveways, not finding the Volvo. Finally, frustrated, with an overdose of caffeine thrumming through my veins, I decided to take the direct approach.
NINETEEN
Located on a stretch of road labeled Main Street, in between the Chamber of Commerce and a coffee shop, the Nausett Police Department looked more like a country store than a lockup. A sign pointed to a small parking lot in the rear. I pulled into the narrow driveway. The candy bar was a memory and I was hungry.
Nausett sits on a scraggy peninsula bordered by Mashpee and Cotuit. It used to be a fishing town in the days when the nearby banks yielded a plentiful harvest of cod. They’d just about jump in the boat, the old-time fishermen used to boast, but no more. The few who persist as commercial fishermen have to sail out to Georges Bank and beyond. The summer people and the sport fishermen gravitate to the fancier towns farther up the Cape, Chatham and Yarmouth, or ferry out to Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket. Cape Cod, summer playground for New York City and Boston, never had much in the way of industry. The Massachusetts Military Reservation covers some thirty square miles. There’s a potato chip factory, some cranberry bogs. The salt air makes for hard farming and the year-rounders wind up renting their homes to the summer people to get enough cash to pay their ever-increasing taxes.
I sat in the car, the feeble heater eking out a stream of warm air, and did a quick review of cops who’d retired down the Cape. I knew the Martha’s Vineyard chief from my Boston days, but couldn’t recall anybody who’d left and headed to Nausett. No easy intro, no casual “driving down here and thought I’d look you up.”
“I’d like to speak to an officer.”
Maybe it was the earplugs in her ears and the MP3 player strapped to her upper arm, maybe the tattoo on the side of her neck, but the young woman who glanced up from the desk didn’t have the air of a sworn peace officer. She had an original face, long and narrow with a defiant set to her jaw. She didn’t wear the uniform, unless the Nausett department had a very casual dress code. Maybe a community volunteer.
“Detective Thurlow is right down the hall.” She put an odd emphasis on the word detective, but I wasn’t sure what that was about. Her manner was cheerful.
Thurlow, the first black man I’d seen on the Cape that day, had his boots on his desk and his focus on a window that overlooked the parking lot. His weary eyes said middle age, but his body, clad in navy slacks and a plaid shirt, said younger.
“Nice-looking car.” There was amusement in his voice and challenge in his eyes. He was a good-looking man who knew it.
I slid my card onto the desktop. He reached over and took it.
I said, “I’m looking for a man.”
“Private Investigations, huh? Cambridge? This legit?”
“Why would I lie to you?”
“Oh, I don’t know. How about you’re from a collection agency?”
“You sound like a cop,” I said lightly. “Always suspicious.”
“This man you’re looking for? He lives in Nausett?”
“The idea was that you’d tell me.”
“Long drive from Cambridge.” He ran a hand over his face like he was checking whether he’d shaved. “Make good time?”
“Yeah.”
“Sit down, why don’t you? And tell me this, you play basketball?”
It seemed to come out of nowhere. “Why?”
“Cambridge. Cambridge Rindge and Latin, that’s where Patrick Ewing played—and now his boy’s playing college ball. You ever see Pat play at the high school? Nah, that would be before your time.”
“I never saw him play.”
“You play?”
I shook my head. “Too short.” That’s not true— and it’s not the reason I don’t play basketball—but I don’t talk about the real reason. “You gonna help me out here?”
/>
Cops are always curious. This one might not tell me whether or not he knew the man, but he’d want to see the photo. He had a calm face, quiet eyes. He looked like a man who governed his emotions. I hoped I’d be able to tell whether or not he recognized the Volvo man.
“So this some marital thing? Divorce stuff?”
I opened my mouth to deny any involvement in “divorce stuff,” thought better of it, and nodded. If I started explaining why I was looking for the man, I’d be there a long time.
“You’re not the wife?” he asked.
“No.”
“Not itching for revenge?”
“No.”
“Not planning to gun him down?”
“No.”
“That’s good. We hicks don’t like that much.”
He seemed to have the Cape chip balanced finely on his shoulder. Bostonians may envy the laid-back lifestyle they see on the Cape come summer, but they don’t want to know about the hardscrabble winters. The Cape people envy the Bostonians their extravagant summer lifestyle. They can’t help but notice the enormous wads of cash flashed in the trendy restaurants. They also can’t help but notice that those same trendy places shut down when the tourists flee. And so it goes: the locals dependent on the tourists, but resentful as well. My home base, Cambridge, is like that all year round: townies versus the college kids who come in fresh each fall just to make the rest of the population feel poor, old, and uneducated.
I wasn’t falling for it. The man’s voice, not to mention his color, gave him away. “Hick, huh?” I said. “You sound like New York.”
“Can’t take the Bronx out of the boy, huh? I figured the accent was just about gone.”
I shook my head. “How about it? Seems pretty quiet around here. What would it hurt to take a look, tell me if you know the guy?”
“Looks are deceiving. Things aren’t that quiet.”
“What, people throw tacks in the road at the rotary?”
“What do you mean?”
“I got a flat there a couple nights ago. Friday night.”
“You were looking for this guy then?”
“Following him.”
His eyes slid out the window, then came back to my face. “Let’s see him.”
I took the photo of my Volvo man out of the file folder and handed it to him.
“Huh,” he said, after thirty seconds of silence. “Never saw him before.”
Either he was a world-class liar or else he was telling the truth. My heart sank. Maybe Roz had already found someone in the tall office building. But she hadn’t rung my cell, and she would have, if she’d gotten anything good.
The lanky tattoo girl wandered back and stood just outside the door.
“Hey, we got another one, Detective.”
“Another what?”
“Disturbance call. Broken window over at the meetinghouse.”
“Again? Well, damn, I’d better get over there and take a look.”
“They’re gonna want you to fingerprint the whole town next. I told them it’s just kids.”
“Rosemary, you’re just supposed to take the reports.”
“Right.”
“I would have taken the call.”
“You were busy with this lady. I said I’d tell you right away. And that’s what I’m doing.”
“Thank you, Rosemary.”
“Detective.”
No love lost between the two of them. I wondered whether she might have more connections in town than Detective Thurlow, maybe know my mystery man.
“I’m out of here,” he said. “Call Mitch or somebody else on the council and tell them I’ll be right there, okay? Politely?”
“Certainly, Detective.”
“And show this lady out. Please.”
Thurlow passed us in the corridor, putting on a jacket, hurrying. Rosemary deliberately slowed her pace and blew out a breath to display her annoyance.
“Lotta work, huh?” I said sympathetically.
“Plenty, without making his calls,” she said.
“Sure is different,” I said.
“What is?”
“I used to be a Boston cop. The idea of an officer rushing out of the station for a broken window—”
“Yeah, and as soon as they put in new windows, they’ll break ’em again. Waste of time, you ask me. Leave ’em boarded up till after the election.”
“This is about Proposition Six?”
“Damn straight it is. Kowtowing to the Indians, that’s what the cops do best around here. They all want security jobs when the casinos come in. They know where their bread gets buttered. Now I gotta make that call. He gets there before I make it, he’ll have my ass.”
“I’ll wait,” I said. “I wanted to ask you something.”
“About Six? You from the TV?”
I waited while she made two calls. She couldn’t find Mitch, had to go with Ned.
“You know this man?” I put the photo on her desk as soon as she’d finished.
She took her time. “Cute guy. No, sorry. So you’re not here about Six?” She sounded disappointed.
I took out the drawing of Jessica and placed that on her desk, too. Mainly I did it because I wasn’t ready to leave yet, to make the long journey home without so much as a summer-shack clam roll to make it worthwhile.
“Hey,” the girl said, craning her long neck. “Lookee there, if it isn’t Julie Feathers. Hot damn, you know where she is?”
“Julie,” I repeated. The J name fit with what the waiter remembered. Julie. Jessica. She’d kept her initial.
“Yep, she’s pretty fresh on the missing list this time out. Moves around, that girl does. Her daddy reports her pretty regular.”
“Her last name is Feathers?”
“Detective Thurlow woulda been on it more except we’re still all worked up around here. Not with Prop Six, or this window-breaking shit; that’s just annoyance stuff. With that Danielle Wilder thing,” the lanky girl said.
I gave her a blank stare. Danielle Wilder. I’d heard or read the name, I knew I had.
“First real murder we’ve had in this town in twenty-five years. She was just about Julie’s best friend, Danielle Wilder was. A killing right here in dinky little Nausett. Thought I’d never hear the end of it, but all the fuss is finally starting to die down because word is they nailed the guy. That’s the word on the street anyway. Some mob thing, guy with a vowel stuck on the end of his name. Boston mob, this guy who’s real high up in the genuine mob. You wouldn’t think it, down here.”
“Boston mob,” I repeated, thinking dead bodies, Las Vegas, thinking why is the name Danielle Wilder so familiar? “You happen to know the guy’s name?”
“I’m not supposed to,” she said meaningfully.
“I’ll bet there’s not a lot around here you don’t know,” I said.
She looked left and right before whispering his name, like she knew she was out of line. And before she said it, I knew it. I didn’t need to hear it spoken aloud.
“What I want to know is why nobody’s arrested him yet,” she added resolutely. “People around here are starting to think the fix is in.”
TWENTY
I sat back in Gloria’s guest chair and watched as her eyes grew rounder.
“Damn,” she said. “I want to hear more.”
“So did I. But Rosemary started getting phone calls. So I got out of there, drove around the block, and lurked till she finished her shift. We are best pals, Rosemary and me.”
I now knew why the Boston police always used sworn officers on the desk. Rosemary not only had attitude, she had big ears and a mouth to match. We’d imbibed predinner drinks at a local tavern; she drank like whiskey sours were a hobby.
“What did she say? Julie Feathers? What kind of name is that?”
“Local humor. Her real name is Julie Farmer, but she’s an Indian, was an Indian, a member of the Nausett tribe, so the kids in the high school decided she wasn’t a farmer, she was an Indian, and—
”
“Injuns wear heap-big feathers.”
“Right.”
“Kids,” Gloria said disapprovingly. When fellow students at her high school started calling her gimp, her three huge brothers sorted them out. Leroy still sorts out anybody who gives his baby sister grief.
I said, “I gave Rosemary Detective McHenry’s name. Eventually she’ll get around to telling Thurlow to contact the BPD.”
“You didn’t tell her Julie was dead?”
I shook my head slowly. “I wanted to get back first, flaunt the news flash to the Macs. Then I thought I’d run it by a friend first.”
“Because of what this Rosemary girl said?”
Rosemary, alas, hadn’t said half enough. She knew for a fact that Danielle Wilder, a legal aide, had been murdered three months ago, going on four. While she hadn’t known the vic personally, she had seen her on occasion, and had given me great detail about Wilder’s clothing, especially her shoes. Rosemary had assumed the crime involved lurid sex because of Wilder’s clothes, not to mention all the hush-hush and whispers, but she had been vague on details. She seemed to think that Wilder’s spike heels had incited the crime, and after a few drinks she’d wanted to discuss all the TV crime shows she had watched since she was seven. The main thing she had been crystal clear on was that Thurlow and the other locals were major-league irritated when the investigation was snatched out of their hands by the FBI.
“Feds, huh?” Gloria said darkly.
“Yep.”
“And she said this Danielle Wilder is the woman Sam’s supposed to have offed? I thought you said the murder bid was about something that happened in Las Vegas?”
“Sam said Las Vegas. I’m sure he said Las Vegas. But there was something about a woman on the Cape. I know that.”
“How?”
“How do I know? I remember he said something.”
“You weren’t listening? What? How could you not listen to something like that?”
“It wasn’t like that. It was like food or a movie, like last summer he went out to dinner with this woman or to see some show.”
“I would have listened,” Gloria said.
I was almost sure I remembered the woman’s name. Danielle was a fairly uncommon name.
