Nantucket Sawbuck (13 page)

The idea spread inside David like spilled wine through a silk tablecloth. He had to do it. It would be a mistake, but he didn't care anymore. Things couldn't get any worse.

As usual, it was David's optimism that was his undoing. Because things can always get worse, much worse; and you never know exactly where the bottom is, until you hit it.

Chapter Fourteen

Secrets

Cindy Henderson didn't want to go to the Lomax party. She hated parties in general, with their pointless social requirements. You had to smile at people you disliked and make conversation with bores. Invariably you would run into someone whom you'd been successfully avoiding for weeks. And of course, after fifteen minutes of small talk, you'd wind up inviting them over for dinner, or planning a two-family vacation, backpacking in Zion National Park—anything to end the conversation. It would be funny, if it were happening to someone else.

Mike had suggested she stay near, to use him as a human shield. It sounded good, but then she would be exposed to the supernaturally tedious conversation of his tradesmen friends. Who bid what on which job, how many board feet of lumber someone got how much cheaper in Vermont, which builder was struggling with the HDC over the pitch of his roof; which plumbers cleaned up after themselves. It was better to just stay home.

For once, Mike didn't seem to mind. “Don't bother,” he'd said that morning at breakfast. “I'm not going to stay long. The last thing I
want to do is spend more time in that mausoleum.”

“Are you sure?”

“Don't worry about it. Take the night off.”

He was so accommodating and thoughtful, she became instantly suspicious. Did he not want her there for some reason? Was there someone he was afraid to have her meet? He had spoken so quickly, jumping right in after her comment, as if it was rehearsed. Over-rehearsed, actually: he needed to take a beat, relax and at least appear to consider what Cindy had said, before starting his prepared remarks.

“I think I will go after all.” She carried her coffee cup to the sink. “I got a new dress from the J. Jill catalogue and I've been wanting to wear it someplace.”

“Are you sure? Because it's really—”

“I'm positive, Mike. This will be fun.”

He shrugged. “Great. Just let me know when you want to leave and we're out of there.”

She kissed him on his way out the door, and held him for an extra second or two, to show that everything was fine between them, precisely because it wasn't. He sensed something off-kilter in the gesture.

“You okay?” he asked.

“Fine,” she said. “Go to work.”

She kissed him again and pushed him out the door. She was sure he had secrets; but she had her secrets, too. She wondered if there were any marriages without them, where everyone told the truth and had nothing to hide. Maybe that was what the storybooks meant by “happily ever after.” Or maybe happy was just an average, drawn between the rages and the joy, the sum of the constant struggle to stay close when everything inside and outside you seemed to be pulling you apart.

It was so much easier to lie.

It was comfortable to have a little private place for yourself, like a daybed where you could snuggle under a quilt for an afternoon nap. Like the fact of her pregnancy. Until she told Mike about it, or started to show, the baby was hers and hers alone. She could feel and do about it precisely what she wanted, without having to consult anyone, without taking anyone else's feelings or advice or demands into account. It was none of anyone else's business right now, not even Mike's.

But there were other things she was happy to keep private. The principal one was named Mark Toland.

When they were seniors in high school, he had swept her up into a brief affair and then casually dumped her. Two years later, he had come to visit her at college, to apologize and win her back. But she had been seeing someone else. The other boy had walked in on them. He'd heard all her one-sided stories about Mark, and instantly recognized the gloating sexual predator she had described in her acid post-coital monologues. There had been a brief shoving match, but Mark was no fighter. His parting words were “Keep your alpha dog on the leash. Before he bites someone and they put him to sleep.”

She had written to Mark occasionally, after that. She felt bad about the way she had described him to the now-defunct boyfriend. She had left out a few essential items: his brilliance and talent, his wit, and energy. And his heavy-lidded, dark-haired good looks. He was tall, with the lean muscles of the Olympic swimmer he had almost become. Of course, the boyfriend had noticed that part. And Mark was rich. He came from six generations of family money; they had begun as cotton and lumber brokers for paper companies. Now they were the single largest manufacturer of notebooks and loose-leaf paper in the world. Mark's older brother Alex was doing most of the grunt work running the business and Mark was free to take his huge trust fund and do whatever he pleased.

As it turned out, what pleased him was making movies. After putting in five years of work and hustle in Los Angeles, he was finally doing it. His family frowned on the business from a distance, but didn't interfere. As they saw it, if he chose to do contemptible cheesy things like flattering scoundrels, compromising his integrity, and—worst of all—
spending his capital
pursuing an odious fantasy, it was all right with them. As long as he didn't come back after he had burned through his inheritance, looking for handouts.

It was a workable truce.

And now he was going to have the satisfaction of rubbing their aristocratic noses in his implausible success. He had been gloating about that on the phone a few days ago. They had been chatting for several weeks, since he was back East scouting locations for his first feature film, and a mutual friend had given him Cindy's number. He always called her at the store now, so the only interruptions were from customers—rich ladies with rich husbands, buying party dresses with corporate credit cards, comparing Mevlana handbags from the sale rack, laughing together. Maybe money did buy happiness. Maybe it really was that simple. You could certainly lease something pretty close to it. These women were certainly enjoying themselves. They didn't need to flirt with old boyfriends on the telephone

Still, the only thing Cindy enjoyed now was a phone call from Mark Toland. The mornings when she didn't hear from him seemed poisonously drab; grim stretches of time like Selectmen's meetings or the eight-hour childhood ferry trips when the harbor was frozen.

“Listen, I'm in New York for two weeks,” he had said suddenly, the other day. “Come down here. We can see each other and neither of us will have to say a word.”

The boldness of the invitation shocked her. “I couldn't.”

“Sure you could. It's easy. You show your ID at the ticket counter and they look up the round-trip ticket I'm going to buy you. Then you get on the plane, eat peanuts, and read. Next thing you know, you're here.”

“No, Mike would never…I mean, I don't know what I could possibly tell him, that would—”

“You have family in the city. Say you're visiting them. Hell—visit them. It won't even be a lie.”

“I have to think about it.”

“Okay, but you can always think of fifty good reasons not to do anything if you think about it long enough.”

Then they had hung up and she hadn't heard from him since.

The conversation seemed a little crazy to her now. She hadn't actually seen Mark since the afternoon he had shown up at her dorm room, all those years ago. She had no business flirting with him over the telephone at this late date. Even daydreaming about meeting him in New York made her feel sleazy and cheap. She had really only let it start because she felt Mike was hiding something from her, which probably wasn't even true in the first place.

She was married, she was six weeks pregnant, and she was going to a fabulous party with her handsome husband in a killer backless silk dress that would get everyone talking about her the way she wanted them to. She crumpled up the slip of paper with Mark Toland's numbers, threw it away and started running herself a bath.

It was like her mother always said: “Life is good if you let it be.”

Chapter Fifteen

The Pen

The Lomax house, surrounded by miles of winter darkness and standing alone on its snow-smothered acres, light blazing from every one of its one hundred and twenty-six windows, looked like a luxury ocean liner icebound in the Bering Strait. I had a brief vision of it tilting up vertical and sinking without a trace—then we were pulling into the crumbled snow piled in the wake of the plow. There were cars parked on both sides of Eel Point Road.

We trudged to the house, me steadying Fiona by the elbow, climbed the frost-slick front stairs pushed inside. I was irritated, my feet were soaked through, I had skidded my car into two walls of banked filthy snow on the way to the house. As far as I was concerned, people who talked about a “winter wonderland of white” had to be doing it from a bungalow in the Florida Keys. They never discussed the sheer bulk of the stuff, or the malign stamina with which it kept coming, burying your car over and over again and shrinking the world. Everything bulged white, every tree branch and fencepost and mailbox; and the world crowded in on you. It was like living in a one of those gift shop paperweights, trapped in a little glass bubble, waiting for someone to shake up the next blizzard.

Fiona had little patience for my complaints. She loved the winter, especially a night like this one when the cold was so pure. No wind, no snow falling, no distractions; just the dense, intoxicating icy air, like Vodka straight out of the freezer.

The party was already busy and the music was loud. I immediately caught sight of my ex-wife Miranda, on the arm of a real estate broker, Joe Arbogast. I left Fiona admiring the Lomax silver collection and eased my way through the chattering crowd to Miranda.

We all said hello and Joe went off looking for another round of champagne.

“Henry, hi,” Miranda said. “We were just saying, if you come over Christmas morning, you can take the kids for lunch. Joe wants to come over and—you know.”

I shrugged. “Sounds good. They're looking forward to Tortola.”

“I got the beach house again. Everyone at school's going to hate them. They'll be brown as berries.”

We stood quietly, listening to snippets of other people's conversations. Nathan Parrish's wife saying “You can't buy people,” and Nathan answering: “On the contrary, Darling. It's easy to buy people. Selling them is the hard part. They depreciate faster than a Ford Explorer.”

I could hear Lomax from across the room: “People come here because they can't make it anywhere else. It's been that way for a thousand years. The Indians who came here couldn't string their wampum straight. I went into one of these bookstores the other day, during Christmas Stroll. And I wanted to buy the big book of the season, the new Grisham. They told me it was in—they had it in the basement. But they hadn't brought it upstairs yet. Our biggest retail day of the year, and they keep
the new John Grisham novel
in the basement because they're too lazy to unpack it. Try getting away with that at Barnes & Noble. You'd be out on your ass in a heartbeat. But that's Nantucket for you. That says it all.”

I turned back to Miranda. “So you're still with Joe.”

“He wants to marry me.”

“That was quick.”

“Quick is good. Even in police work. You told me that. Most crimes are solved in the first week, or they don't get solved at all.”

“I don't know, Miranda. You're in the first blush of a love affair and you're already comparing it to a murder investigation.”

Fiona drifted over as Joe returned with two flutes of champagne.

Miranda took her glass and nodded. “Hello, Fiona.”

“I like your hair.”

“I just had it cut. For the benefit of my women friends. Men never notice anything.”

I put up my hands. “Not my job anymore.”

“I was going to say something,” Joe added.

“I'm sure you were.” Miranda leaned over and kissed his cheek. Then she glanced around. “Beautiful house.”

“It should be,' Fiona said, “My girls have been cleaning it for two days.”

“He has such beautiful things.”

Fiona shrugged. “He can afford them.”

The music stopped and at that moment someone near the fireplace laughed. Fiona looked over and looked away, but not quickly enough.

“Got to mingle,” Miranda said, and she pulled Joe toward the French doors.

I stared at the fireplace through the shifting jumble of heads and shoulders. I heard the laugh again. It was Nathan Parrish, talking to Lomax. Fiona put her hand on my arm.

It had been more than a week since the auction, but I hadn't been able to bring it up. I'd only seen Fiona twice, and she had been in such a fine lively mood both times that the whole subject seemed absurd. I knew she'd put me on the defensive, trying to explain what I'd been doing at the VFW Hall in the first place. There could be any number of explanations for the furtive collusion I had glimpsed that afternoon. But more and more, I wanted to hear one of them—preferably one I hadn't thought of myself. Ideally, one that was true.

The lying bothered me the most. If she had a bidding partner, if that was all it was, why be so devious? The uneasy suspicions kept pouring in and with no way to drain them, they were overflowing like a bathtub, gradually flooding the house. Water damage. You couldn't fix it, that was what the contractors always said. You had to tear things out and rebuild from scratch.

“I have to talk to you,” I said now.

“Henry, it's a little crowded in here for—”

“You like the cold. Let's go outside.”

The music had started up again. I read her lips: “All right.”

We got our coats and stepped out into the bitter night air. There were no other lighted houses visible. It was so isolated, so remote: this patch of gaudy illumination in the middle of the dark Atlantic. I helped her over the low stone wall and we walked to the side of the house. We could still hear the muffled bluegrass music and the rustle of conversation.

“I saw you at Osona's auction last week,” I said.

“You—? But, how did you—?”

“I drove out to Madaket for lunch. You weren't there so I tried the next likely place.”

She looked down. “Detective.”

“I saw you…working, with Nathan Parrish.”

“Well, that's what we do. We work together. He likes collecting and he doesn't want to be taken advantage of. I love things and I can't afford to buy them. I was cleaning his house and he came in, very highfalutin and snobbish, so I couldn't resist telling him that his precious Andrew Sandsbury lightship basket was a fake. I ran into him at an auction a few weeks later, kept him from making a bad mistake over a Colonial hutch. We've been working together ever since.”

“So…nothing else is going on? Because it seemed like something else was going on.”

“Henry, he's married.”

“So was I. So are half the men at this party. It wouldn't stop most of them. And you happen to look like the younger version of Carla Parrish. The perfect trade-in.”

“He loves his wife.”

“Well, he's cheating on her with someone. I saw them together.”

“Really? And how did that come to pass?”

“I was driving a late shift on Main Street a few weeks ago. I saw two silhouettes behind the shades in his office. Then they …merged. He had a girl up there and she wasn't taking dictation.”

“Well, she couldn't have been too picky.”

“No?”

“He's a bit old for me, frankly. Besides, he's fat and he drinks too much.”

“But he's rich.”

“Well, that might explain it. If you're that sort of person. I wouldn't touch him with the wet end of a floor mop, and there's nothing more to say about it.” Yet she started anyway. “I, I want to—”

“What?”

“I want…I don't know.”

“Come on, tell me.”

She got hold of herself, and looked me in the eye. “I want to have a nice time tonight. I'll tell you why I lied. I was buying you a present.”

“I thought you didn't approve of Christmas. You told me that—”

“We should have it every other year. I know. But anyway…it wasn't for Christmas. It was just for you. I hate to see you with those awful Bic pens you use. I heard there were going to be some nice fountain pens at the sale, so I made sure to get you one.”

She reached into her pocket and handed me a small, oblong box, wrapped in dark paper.

“Fiona—”

“Open it.”

It was a Montblanc with a gold nib, maybe forty years old.

I tilted it toward the light from the windows. The inlaid nib flashed. “It's beautiful.”

“You're a beautiful writer and you should have a nice tool for your work. Poetry's a gift from God. Which I do appreciate, whatever you may think.”

I laughed. “But unlike you, God leaves the price tags on. Not to mention that ‘some assembly required' stuff. Thanks a lot, buddy.”

She stared me down, refusing even to smile at my little joke. “You should be thankful for the good things in your life.”

“I know.” I pulled her toward me and kissed her. Cold lips, warm tongues. When we separated I said. “Very thankful.”

“Come on, you great beast, let's get inside before we freeze to death.”