“Where?”
“Past the Hummocks and Cat Island. The Harbor Patrol said Sammy was going too fast and we should just move along and go home. What if they tell my dad? He’ll tell me to stop hanging around Sammy. Sammy’s dad’s in the navy and my dad doesn’t like that either. He said it’s too militaristic.”
What was Harbor Patrol doing out past Cat Island? Harbor Patrol managed the yachts and powerboats traveling in and out of Mystic Bay marina. They mainly helped boaters find their slips at the town dock and occasionally towed boaters who broke down.
They probably assumed that Bit and Sammy were in trouble or— I hesitated. Two kids near a private island. Maybe Harbor Patrol thought they were trespassing.
“Did you guys land somewhere?” I said.
Bit kicked at the gravel. “Nope. But we wanted to. We wanted to explore Cat Island but they stopped us and told us to go back.”
Things were different now. When Lorel and I were young, kids in Mystic Bay sailed, kayaked, and sailboarded all over the bay, freely exploring the tiny islands not far offshore. Some had cottages on them and so we avoided them, preferring to play on the uninhabited ones, most little more than rocks covered with gull poop, sand, and stubborn scrubby trees.
“When did this happen, Bit?”
“Early this morning. The Harbor Patrol guys were mad.”
A thought jolted me. “Maybe they were looking into the girl that Bertha and I found.”
Somehow Bit had managed to eat his lobster roll without my noticing. “Here, have some of mine, too.” I split mine in half and gave it to him. We finished the roll and then licked our fingers.
“I don’t think Harbor Patrol’s going to tell your dad,” I said. Why would they? Bit wasn’t doing anything any other Mystic Bay kid hadn’t done a thousand times.
“All hands on deck!” Sunlight glinted on Hector’s bald head and gold earring as he called from the kitchen’s screen door. “The Fourth of July weekend invasion has commenced.”
Bit rushed off to the shed to get more lobsters. I tossed our trash and ran to the kitchen.
A line of hungry customers streamed in the door the rest of the day so I had no time to think about anything beyond lobster rolls. As the afternoon wore on, I realized I hadn’t seen Lorel in a while. “Where’s Lorel?”
At the stove, Aunt Gully stirred a pot of her secret-recipe Lobster Love sauce. “She had to go to Boston for a meeting, then she’s going to meet Patrick at the casino for dinner.”
Lorel’s job was intense, so it didn’t surprise me that she’d have meetings during her vacation. “Funny how Lorel says she hates the casino but she’s up there all the time with Patrick.”
Aunt Gully started singing and stirred her sauce faster. I sighed. I didn’t want to talk about Lorel and Patrick, either.
Two Gully’s Gals came into the kitchen. “Gully, we want to play restaurant!”
“Allie, why don’t you take a break?” Aunt Gully avoided my eyes. It dawned on me that she’d been giving me a lot of breaks. I wasn’t going to argue about taking a break from picking lobster. I washed my hands, waved, and pushed through the screen door.
Without conscious thought, my footsteps followed the uneven brick sidewalk. The sights that usually cheered me—the sparkling water on the river, the gaudy pink-and-orange color scheme of Bit’s family’s rambling Victorian, the colorful shop windows—were a blur. All I could see was water streaming off the body of the girl hooked on the lobster pot. The Girl with the Pitchfork Tattoo.
Why hadn’t she been identified yet? Who were her friends? Her family? Hadn’t anybody been looking for her? So many people were thinking of her and working to find her family. Even Mac Macallen had seemed concerned and he didn’t even know her.
Mac. There had been something about our conversation in the costume shop that made me uneasy. His home wasn’t far from the shack, so I decided to head over and see if he was around. People who work in theater have irregular schedules and Mac sometimes went home during the day to tend his garden.
My footsteps took me into the neighborhood just past elegant Christ Church on the hill. Roses tumbled over the black iron gates of houses that had been expensively renovated and restored. Mac Macallen lived in number 30, a former sea captain’s house painted a soft yellow with black shutters.
Two urns of red geraniums flanked the front door, matching the red Mini in the driveway. Mac’s license plate showed his commitment to the theater—THEBAY1. I lifted the old-fashioned lion’s head door knocker and rapped. And waited. No answer, no sound except birdsong and a lawnmower farther down the block. I walked down the porch, leaning past a potted palm to peer in the window. No dice. Mac had plantation shutters covering the tall windows.
I’d attended a cocktail fund-raiser here in the spring. Mac had celebrated the renovation of a small red barn/garage behind his house into a guest cottage. Perhaps he was there or working in his garden. I walked down the drive to the backyard.
Mac’s yard sloped down to Harris Cove, which flowed into the Micasset River farther to the west. Mac’s waterfront backyard had a million dollar view. There was a small lean-to at the back of the garden with boating equipment, and a small motorboat was tied up at the dock. I trailed my fingers over some crimson roses and marveled at their scent.
On the back of the house, slate steps led to a patio that ran the length of the house. I ran up the steps to French doors and knocked. I shaded my eyes, peered in, saw an elegant mahogany table topped with a vase of red roses. No Mac.
Suddenly, I felt watched. I swung around. The red barn looked closed up tight. The neighbors’ view of Mac’s backyard was blocked by tall arborvitae.
I realized that anyone watching me might assume I was a burglar casing the joint. People in Mystic Bay didn’t worry about crime. Jaywalking, double parking, noise, overenthusiastic tourists helping themselves to plants and historic gewgaws, yes. Theft? Many residents didn’t even bother to lock their doors.
Skirting a black cast-iron table, I moved to the next window. The kitchen. Past that was another set of French doors.
I peered in, breathing fast. It was clear Mac wasn’t home. What was wrong with me? Some feeling was driving me to peek inside.
This room was an art studio. An easel in one corner had a large painting on it, covered with a white sheet. I tilted my head and mashed my cheek against the glass to get a better angle.
Larger-than-life faces with exaggerated planes, some with eyes or noses out of proportion, slashes of white or red paint for highlight, glowered from the walls. Some were female nudes. They looked like work done by Picasso. Terms from a long-ago art history class surfaced. Cubist. Impressionist.
None of the faces in the portraits looked happy. The heavy diagonal lines of color, the thickly applied paint rendered the figures disturbing. Ugly. Strange.
One portrait showed a young woman with long white-blond hair against a backdrop of orange flame. Her wrists were covered by heavy black and pink slashes. Or were they handcuffs? TMI. Still, I pressed closer to the glass.
In the next portrait, heavy slashes of black paint formed a black ponytail. The subject’s chin tilted up and the lips turned down atop an elegant, long neck.
Margot. I gasped. That was Margot, though I wasn’t sure it was a portrait that she’d appreciate. Was Mac painting all of us? My eyes went to the covered easel. Could he be painting—me? Would I find my hair rendered with awful orange clumps of paint under that sheet?
I had to see what was on the easel.
I turned the handle on the French door.
It was locked. Drat. I rattled it.
A dog barked down the street. I jumped.
What am I thinking!
Far off on the river a yellow kayak knifed through the water. Please don’t be Mac. I couldn’t just go down his back steps as if I were making an entrance in Mame. I edged across the patio and swung a leg over the railing. Careful of my almost-healed ankle, I dropped between two laurel bushes
then bushwhacked to the front of the house.
What had come over me? If that had been Mac in the kayak, he just saw me dive into his bushes.
I hurried back to the Mermaid, feeling foolish. Those portraits were unnerving, but maybe Mac was trying a new technique. Or maybe he was just not very good at painting portraits.
Plus, there was probably only an eighty percent chance that he was the kayaker who saw me leave the house. How many women with long red hair did he know? My shoulders slumped. Probably one. Aunt Gully had always warned me about my curiosity getting the better of me.
A gust of hot exhaust from a green motor coach blasted me as it muscled down the narrow street. I coughed. The bus was emblazoned with a five-foot-tall lobster wearing a tricorn hat. YANKEE LOBSTER TOURS. I rushed into the Mermaid. “All hands on deck! A tour bus is coming!”
The hours flew by. When it was time to head to rehearsal, I waved to Aunt Gully and took the van to the Jake.
* * *
I perched atop my rock as stagehands prepared the grotto scene, the scene written especially for the no-show German opera singer Dara Van Der Witz. Her understudy swore and hurled an empty water bottle into the wings.
“Sorry.” She pressed her fists to her forehead. “It’s just so frustrating. This Dara what’s-her-name hasn’t shown up for any rehearsals and we open next week. I’ve talked with Mac, I’ve talked with anyone who will listen, and they just tell me to be patient.”
“It is weird.” I shifted carefully. My mermaid tail made balancing tricky. “But it’s only one scene. Sometimes performers just walk on.” Unusual, but I’d seen it happen. Rules and professional standards that applied to ordinary performers were bent for divas.
“I looked her up online,” she said. “There’s no record of any opera singer, German or otherwise, named Dara Van Der Witz. It’s all a bad joke.”
I gave my tail an experimental flip. “Maybe it’s someone who’s trying something new and doesn’t want anyone to know about it.”
She snorted. “Nobody in this business does anything in secret.”
Mac crossed the stage and gave me a cheerful wave. I relaxed. Obviously he hadn’t seen me snooping around his house.
After rehearsal, a group of us went out for drinks. I texted Aunt Gully to let her know I’d be late. Afterward, the group decided to go dancing at New Salt. There was no way I was going back after my scene with Patrick. I headed home.
Chapter 12
As I swung into Aunt Gully’s driveway at eleven, Lorel was getting out of her BMW sedan. Lorel’s caramel leather miniskirt and white silky top glowed in the porch light. Lorel slammed the car door.
Light from the living room window flickered. The curtain twitched—Aunt Gully was sneaking a peek.
Lorel glared at me.
Warily, I got out of the van. “What did I do now?”
Lorel looped the chain of her purse over her shoulder. She leaned back on her car, pressed her hand to her forehead. “Nothing. I’ve got a headache.”
An engine rumbled and a white sports car screeched into our drive. The driver slammed the brakes and barely missed the rear of Aunt Gully’s van. The engine cut and Patrick Yardley burst out. He stopped short when he saw me. “Allie.”
“Patrick.”
A Harbor Patrol SUV rolled by the house. What were they doing over here? Lorel, Patrick, and I froze but it didn’t stop. Too bad they weren’t really cops. They could have arrested Patrick for driving recklessly. He’d almost rear-ended Aunt Gully’s van.
Lorel and Patrick didn’t notice. Waves of unspoken emotion twanged between them. I didn’t want to get caught up in this, especially if Patrick was here to tell Lorel that I’d gone to New Salt to talk to him.
Lorel swore under her breath. “Allie, just go in the house.”
I hurried in the front door, tossing my dance bag on the couch. Aunt Gully looked up from a ball of green nylon netting that she crocheted into sink scrubbies and sold at the church holiday bazaar. Her face was pink.
“What’s going on?” she stage-whispered.
“You tell me. I thought they were going on a date.” I sidled toward the window.
“They were supposed to meet at the casino.” Aunt Gully sighed. “Where they always seem to go.”
Patrick’s voice, urgent and low, flowed in on a breeze that lifted Aunt Gully’s curtains. I strained to hear.
Aunt Gully put down her crocheting. “Come on, young lady. Let’s give them some privacy. Nice night for a walk.”
“Stop being so decent, Aunt Gully. Besides, didn’t I just see you by the window?”
“Who, me?” She led me out the back door.
We cut across the backyard and scooted down the road, skirting puddles of light thrown by the streetlights.
Aunt Gully glanced back toward Gull’s Nest. “That’s some sports car Patrick has. New Salt must be doing well,” she whispered.
I looked back. Patrick folded his arms and looked at the ground. Lorel faced him, a shadow, her words indistinct, but her tone strident.
“Or he’s doing well at the casino,” Aunt Gully said.
I doubted it. Nobody did well at the casino. “Mr. High Roller.” Margot had told me she’d seen Patrick and Lorel in the special high rollers area. At least one thing she’d said was true.
Aunt Gully and I took the narrow strip of sand between two cottages, one dark and one with windows glowing, that led to Kiddie Beach and the breakwater. The occupied house was a rental named Fast Times. A late-night talk show blared inside.
We turned south, along the beach. I kicked off my shoes and my ankle wrap and let the cool waves curl over my toes. Aunt Gully took off her slippers and did the same. We didn’t speak as we walked. I knew she was thinking about the same thing I was—Lorel.
A group roasted marshmallows over a bonfire. The smoky scent was sweet. One guy strummed a guitar as we passed. A thin band of moonlight striped the water.
After a few minutes Aunt Gully and I turned and headed back.
“They should be done by now,” Aunt Gully said as we approached the path back to the street. “I hope.”
Arguing voices made me stop short. I tugged Aunt Gully’s arm as two shadows emerged from the same narrow path between the cottages we’d taken earlier. The pale moonlight shone on smooth blond hair. Lorel and Patrick. She stomped barefoot in the sand, holding her strappy shoes. Instead of heading down the beach as we had done, they turned toward the breakwater. Thank goodness they were so intent on each other that they didn’t see us.
We stopped where Fast Times fronted the sand and peered around the cedar-shingled wall. Patrick’s voice was urgent, but I couldn’t make out his words.
“Whatever line he’s giving her, I don’t think it’s working,” I whispered.
They stepped onto the breakwater.
The sliver of moon gave stingy light but Lorel knew every rock on that breakwater. She could walk it with her eyes closed. So could I. Patrick, on the other hand, took his phone out of his pocket and turned on the flashlight. A beam of light bounced slowly along the stones as Patrick stepped from one rock to the next. Lorel sat on the rock farthest out. Distant. Remote.
Typical Lorel.
Aunt Gully whispered, “Do you think they’re breaking up?”
“I can only hope.”
Patrick left his phone flashlight on. He crouched behind Lorel and reached for her. Lorel lashed out, backhanding him, then covered her face with her hands. He fell back on the rocks. I was glad I couldn’t hear what they were saying. I was pretty sure the laugh track from the television in Fast Times covered the sound of Lorel’s sobs.
Aunt Gully grasped the heart-shaped locket at her throat. “Allie, that boy’s been nothing but trouble for your sister.”
“Lorel thought she could change him.”
Aunt Gully sighed. “Leopards don’t change their spots.”
A shred of cloud crossed the moon and blacked out everything on the breakwater except the flashli
ght beam of Patrick’s phone.
The kids down the beach shouted. A dog barked. The waves hissed on the sand. These were the normal sounds of summer for as long as I could remember. Normal. That’s what Lorel should have—some nice normal guy with a nice normal job with an exceptionally nice income.
Farther down the street, a string of firecrackers crackled. Aunt Gully and I jumped.
“We should go back.” Aunt Gully tugged my arm. “I don’t know what got into me.”
“We want to protect her.” I turned to go, but the breeze shifted and carried their voices toward us. Lorel’s voice shrilled. Aunt Gully and I froze.
The cloud passed and again the gray moonlight outlined Patrick and Lorel on the breakwater. Patrick held out both arms like an offering.
“Don’t you take him back, Lorelei Larkin,” Aunt Gully whispered.
Patrick’s phone rang. Lorel shouted, “Damn cell phone!”
Lorel snatched at Patrick’s hand and threw the phone. There was a small splash.
Aunt Gully squinted. “Did she just throw his cell phone in the water?”
“Ha! I believe she did.” Go, Lorel.
Lorel pushed Patrick aside. His arms pinwheeled as he fought to regain his balance, but he tumbled off the rocks. He shouted something I was glad Aunt Gully probably couldn’t make out. Lorel stormed off the breakwater.
Patrick, in the water up to his knees, splashed with both hands, searching for his phone.
“And don’t ever speak to me again!” Lorel stomped off in the sand.
“Oh, God, here she comes. Go!” Aunt Gully and I scampered down the path and hustled across Fast Times’s front lawn. We dashed down the street to Gull’s Nest, keeping away from the streetlights, our bare feet slapping on the pavement.
“Oh, dear Lord,” Aunt Gully gasped. “I hope she doesn’t see us.”
We hurried into the house. I threw myself on the couch and arranged myself into what I hoped was a casual pose.
Panting, Aunt Gully scurried into the kitchen. A few moments later she flopped beside me on the couch, mopping her brow with a dishtowel. I hit the TV remote and the screen came to life with the loud laughter of the late show.
Against the Claw Page 7
