The Weekenders (11 page)

Riley swallowed hard. “What happens now? I mean, with my husband's body? I need to make arrangements.”

“For now, his body has been taken to the morgue at Memorial Hospital in Southpoint. As I mentioned, there will be an autopsy. That's state law. Unfortunately, as you know, this is a holiday, so that could take a few days.”

A holiday. She'd forgotten about that. This was to have been the weekend to start the summer, to start getting used to the reality of divorce. Riley had forgotten. Now, she guessed, she'd start getting used to the idea of being a widow.

The sheriff set his coffee cup carefully in the sink. “Just one more thing, Mrs. Griggs. Were you aware that your husband was having financial difficulties? And that your home here was in foreclosure?”

“No.” Her head was throbbing. “I didn't know anything. Last night, when we got to the house and saw the sign tacked to the door, that was the first I knew about any of this. I thought it was a mistake.”

She looked up at the sheriff and realized she was crying. “A horrible mistake.”

 

11

“Mom?” Maggy's shrill voice rang out from the hallway. Riley heard her bare feet slapping against the wooden stair treads. A moment later, she stood in the kitchen doorway, dressed in an oversize T-shirt, her hair disheveled. When she saw Ed Godchaux seated at the table, she tugged self-consciously at the hem of the shirt, trying to pull it down over her bare, tanned thighs.

“Mom, there's a cop car in the driveway. What's going on? Why are Ed and Parrish here? And the cops? Has something happened?”

Riley jumped to her feet and gathered her daughter into her arms. She stroked Maggy's hair, wondering how she would find the words to break this child's heart.

And Maggy
was
her heart. Motherhood had been a hard-fought battle for Riley. She'd suffered through two first-trimester miscarriages before finally managing to carry this baby full-term.

Once she and Wendell took Maggy home from the hospital, her anxieties about motherhood hadn't ended. Her newborn had learned to sleep through the night months before Riley was able to do so without sneaking into the nursery and checking on the infant every few hours.

Riley had been driven in the early years of her journalism career. After Maggy's birth, she'd eventually funneled all that energy into motherhood, taking an extended leave from the television station. She'd only briefly, reluctantly, returned to her evening anchor position after the station's assistant manager, a sympathetic older mother herself, had pointed out that many children not only survived, but thrived in the care of a nanny or a good preschool.

Riley had a shelf of pregnancy, childbearing, and parenting self-help books at home in Raleigh, but nothing she'd ever read in those books could have prepared her for a moment like this.

Maggy pulled away from her mother's embrace, her blue-gray eyes narrowed. “It's Dad, isn't it? Tell me, Mom. Something happened to him, didn't it? That's why he didn't make the ferry last night. Tell me right now!”

Riley glanced over at Ed, who stood now, his hand on her right shoulder.

“Honey? Yes. It's Dad. He was … there was some kind of accident.” She grasped her daughter's hand. “Dad's dead, Mags.”

“No.” Maggy wrenched away from Riley. She looked at Ed for confirmation. “He's not, is he?”

Ed nodded, his expression grave. “I'm so sorry, but it's true.”

“Nooooooo.” Maggy howled, collapsing to the floor. “Noooo. Nooo. Nooo.”

Riley knelt down beside the child, trying to embrace her, but Maggy pushed her violently away. “No!”

Ed stood quietly. “I'll get Parrish. We'll be on the porch if you need us.”

Maggy looked up, tears streaming down her face. “What happened?” she whispered.

“We don't really know yet,” Riley said. “Some kind of accident, they think.”

“Oh my God,” Maggy moaned. “Was he in a car wreck?”

“No. The sheriff told me they found Dad this morning. In the water, at the marina.”

“What? What does that mean? Dad couldn't drown. It's the wrong guy. Dad couldn't drown. Did you tell the sheriff they made a mistake?”

Riley reached out and tucked a strand of damp hair behind Maggy's ear. “It's not a mistake. Billy was there. This morning. It was your dad.”

“I don't believe you.”

“It's true, Magpie.”

Billy had entered the kitchen so quietly that neither of them noticed his presence. He sat down on the floor and took both of Maggy's hands in his. “I wish it wasn't true. Nobody wants it to be but it is. It just is.”

*   *   *

“I want to see him,” Maggy said.

They were sitting at the kitchen table. Riley drinking her second cup of scalding black coffee, Billy drinking a Diet Dr Pepper.

“Oh, honey,” Riley said, shaking her head. “No. I know this is a shock for you. It's a shock for all of us. But that's not a good idea. Look. The sheriff said Dad had some kind of wound on his head. You don't want to see that. It's too upsetting.”

“I don't care,” Maggy said. “You think it's not upsetting knowing he's dead? Knowing he was in the water like that?”

“It's just that, well, the sheriff said there has to be an autopsy. I don't even know yet when we can have a service.”

Maggy stuck out her chin in an expression Riley knew all too well.

“He's my father. You can't just dig a hole in the ground and bury him without letting me see him. It's not fair.”

“All right,” Riley said, shrugging. “I'll call the sheriff and tell him what you want. It's a holiday weekend, so he didn't know when they'd actually … you know.”

“That's the worst idea I ever heard,” Evelyn chimed in. She'd been flitting nervously around the kitchen for fucking ever, as far as Riley was concerned, ever since Billy had pulled her aside upstairs and told her the reason for the sheriff's visit.

Evelyn put down the broom she'd been using to sweep up nonexistent crumbs. She took a seat at the table, directly opposite her only grandchild.

“Listen to me, Margaret. I know you think you're all grown up, and that you can handle seeing your father like that. But you have no idea what it will be like.”

“I do so. I saw Boots—after she got run over by that car at home. I'm the one who had to pick her up and put her in the shoebox and bury her. And I went to Granny Griggs's funeral, too. I went right up to the coffin, when Mom wasn't looking, and I touched her hand.”

“Maggy!' Riley said, shocked.

“I'm not talking about a kitten, or an old lady whose funeral you went to when you were only seven years old,” Evelyn said.

“I was eight.”

“You were a little girl, and you scarcely knew your Granny Griggs, because she'd been in that nursing home for years when she passed away. This is your father you're talking about. It's an entirely different matter. Right now, you're in shock. You don't really know what you want.”

“Mama?” Billy gave her an almost imperceptible look. “Why don't we let Riley decide what's appropriate for her own daughter?”

“Because she's obviously not thinking clearly right now, or she'd never even consider letting this child have her way.” Evelyn's voice rose, and Riley's head throbbed even worse.

She stood up slowly, holding the edge of the table to stabilize herself.

“I'm going upstairs to shower and get dressed,” she said quietly. She held out a hand to her daughter. “Come on, Mags.”

 

12

Sunday morning, Riley was sitting at the kitchen table, staring down at a plate of cold scrambled eggs that her mother had just slid in front of her, when the doorbell rang.

“Got it,” Scott said quietly. From the hallway, they heard subdued voices. Five minutes later, he was back, carrying a foil-wrapped casserole.

“What's that?” Evelyn got up to look.

“Mona Gillespie brought her Chinese chicken casserole,” Scott said, placing it carefully on the countertop. “She said to tell you to bake it at three-fifty for thirty-seven minutes.”

“Hideous,” Billy said, lifting the foil to get a peek. “Just as I feared, topped with chop suey noodles. And almonds.”

“Mona Gillespie is a dear, sweet friend,” Evelyn said. “Wasn't that thoughtful of Mona, Riley?”

“Very thoughtful.” Riley pushed the eggs around on her plate, clockwise, and then counterclockwise.

Five minutes later, the doorbell rang again, and then again. It had been only twenty-four hours, but word of Wendell Griggs's death had already begun to spread. The phone rang, and offerings of food began to pile up.

“Where's Maggy?” Billy asked, standing with the refrigerator door ajar, as he searched for a place to stash Sheila King's tomato aspic.

“She went to the beach with some of the Billingsley kids, first thing this morning,” Riley reported. “Shane, the oldest one, had a cast-net. They seem to think they're going to catch a shark.”

“Good for Mags,” Billy said approvingly. “No use her sitting around the house all day with us.”

“That's what I think, too. But I told her she needs to be back in time to shower and change so we can make the two-fifteen ferry,” Riley added.

“You're going to town?” Evelyn asked, her coffee cup poised inches from her carefully made-up lips. “Traffic will be terrible.”

“I know, but the sheriff has arranged for us to go to the hospital so Maggy can see Wendell.”

“Of course.” Evelyn's face radiated disapproval as she removed the plate of eggs and dumped them in the trash with deliberate ceremony.

“You talked to the sheriff this morning? Did he have any news?” Billy asked.

“Not really. He wanted my permission to take the Boston Whaler over to the mainland, so they can have somebody from the state crime lab take a look at it.”

“What do they want with the boat?” Scott asked.

“They're assuming Wendell came over to the island on the Whaler since his name wasn't on the ferry manifests for the past week, and they found him close to where the boat was tied up. I told him Wendell did that sometimes, if he needed to. I guess they're looking for fingerprints or something. He was pretty vague about everything.”

“Fingerprints?” Evelyn frowned. “This was a horrible, tragic accident. It's clear that Wendell must have slipped, hit his head on the dock, and fallen into the water. Why would they want to fingerprint the boat?”

Riley's headache was back. The truth was, it had never really gone away. She'd gotten little sleep the night before, and now, it felt as though a band of wire was wrapped tightly around her skull.

“They think there's more to it than that. There's another head wound—the sheriff called it blunt force trauma. Somebody hit him. Hard. Hard enough to knock him down.”

“Jesus!” Billy whispered.

“Who would want to kill Wendell?” Evelyn asked, her pale blue eyes filling with tears.

I would,
Riley thought, remembering the shock and humiliation she'd suffered on the ferry, and feeling yet another wave of guilt.

“But why?” Billy gave up on finding a place for the aspic. He set the dish on the counter, alongside Sylvia Sutliff's pineapple fluff and Marilyn Butler's strawberry pretzel salad, which sat next to Cleo Metcalf's chocolate sour cream pound cake.

Why not?
Riley thought. And she was immediately ashamed. Again.

“The sheriff seems to think it might have something to do with Wendell's business dealings,” she said finally. She swallowed hard, blinking back sudden tears. “Maybe something connected to our house being foreclosed. I don't understand any of this.”

The back door swung open with a bang, and a tall, lanky woman with damp silver hair worn in a long braid breezed into the kitchen.

“Good morning, everybody,” Mary Roosevelt Nolan sang out in her husky voice. She wore a baggy, faded black one-piece bathing suit with a towel wrapped loosely around her hips and she had a pair of white rubber swim goggles pushed up into her hair as a headband.

“Hi, Aunt Roo,” Riley said, grateful for the distraction of her aunt's arrival.

Mary Roosevelt Nolan was used to being a distraction. Christened such by her New Deal–loving father, her name had been shortened to Roo by her baby brother, W.R., who happened to be Riley's father.

Roo was a confirmed spinster, devoted birdwatcher and, to the chagrin of many of her relatives, a card-carrying liberal Democrat and either her sister-in-law Evelyn's best friend or worst enemy, depending on both of the women's moods. She lived in the carriage house at Shutters.

“The water felt glorious this morning, and I even saw a long-billed curlew,” Roo said, helping herself to a blueberry muffin from a basket that had been dropped off moments earlier by Gretchen Lombard.

“I guess you must have loved it, since you decided to track it all across my kitchen floor,” Evelyn said, mopping at the offending drops of water with a paper towel.

“Sorry.” Roo shrugged and poured herself a mug of coffee. “Why are you all sitting around here on such a beautiful morning?” She pointed at the lineup of dishes on the counter. “And what's with all the food? Are we having a party I'm not invited to?”

Billy and Riley exchanged a look.

“Aunt Roo,” Billy said gently. “Didn't you get the voice mail I left you last night?”

“Hell no. I hate voice mails. They're always from some telemarketer trying to sell me a time-share at Disney World. Now, you tell me, what does an old maid like me want with a condo in Orlando? They don't even have a beach there.”

“Mary Roosevelt Nolan!” Evelyn snapped. “Maybe if you took the trouble to listen to the messages we leave you, you'd know what's going on around here. For your information, Wendell is dead.”