Nantucket Grand (31 page)

The gesture snapped Pell out of his daze.

“You…bastard!” he grunted, and twisted out of my grip. He lurched at me, getting his hands on my head, ducking me under the water.

We punched at each other in ludicrous slow motion as we struggled back to the surface. He clipped the side of my head and jammed me under again before I could get a breath. The guy was actually trying to drown me after I had just saved his life. I had no air in my lungs and I was starting to black out.

A second later he was yanked off me from above—the bo'sun had him by the collar, dragging him up into the first of two tenders.

“Don't kill him,” I sputtered, gasping for breath.

The detective, Louis Berman, helped me up into the second boat. “So that's it.” He inclined his head toward the field of whitewater where the
Nantucket Grand
had been floating a few minutes before. “We need Celine Dion to sing it down for us.”

“I was thinking more about
Gilligan's Island
than
Titanic
.”

“Really?
The Minnow
?”

“It shows appropriate disrespect.”

I checked out our tender—various crew members, along with Daisy and Sue Ann. But no Phelan. I couldn't see him on the other boat either. I finally caught sight of him in the water, swimming away roughly in the direction of Portugal.

The kid at the outboard saw him too. “It's Mr. Phelan! We're coming, Mr. Phelan!” He gunned the motor, turned the little skiff in a fan of spume and chugged toward the engineer.

Phelan rolled over onto his back as we approached. “Leave me alone,” he said. “Go on, get out of here.”

“Liam, get in the boat,” I said.

“No.”

“Come on, don't be crazy, just—”

“I'm not crazy, and you know that very well. Now leave me alone.”

I turned to the boy at the motor. “Hand me that rope!” It was coiled up at his feet.

“You mean the bowline?”

“Jesus Christ—whatever you call it! Just give it to me!”

He handed it over and I heaved over the side toward Liam. It spun in slow motion like a giant Frisbee, unwinding. The bulk of it hit with a splash a few feet from him. “Grab it!”

“No thank you, Chief. I'm done.”

He started swimming again, and the boy at the motor revved it to follow. I grasped his arm, shook my head. Liam had made his decision. In his position I might very well have made the same one.

I lifted my own hand in a final wave and then turned back to the other passengers.

Daisy had a knife against Sue Ann Pelzer's throat.

Pell, the yacht, Phelan and his swim to oblivion—all gone in an instant, dragged under by the gleam of the blade.

I heaved myself forward. “Don't do it!”

Daisy flinched back. The knife drew blood.

“Get away from me!”

“Daisy—”

“I'll cut her throat, I mean it.” Sue Ann squirmed but Daisy had her in a vise. She was stronger than she looked.

I took a breath. “Daisy, don't do this.”

She tossed her head toward Phelan, still swimming strongly away. “Why not? My life is over anyway—just like his.”

“But it's not. You never wanted any of this. You were coerced, and now you're the main witness against Pell. All you have to do is tell the District Attorney what you told me today. If you agree to testify, they'll cut you a deal. You could get immunity—or a stint of community service.”

“Working with kids? I'm sure everyone would love to see me working with kids again.”

“No, no—obviously not. I mean—but there's all kinds of things you can do. Park clean-up, working at the food bank—”

“I don't want to do any of that. I just want to kill this bitch and die.”

“Think about Andrew—”

“She killed him! Don't you get it?”

“But what would he want you to do? What would Andrew say now? You're no killer. He knew that. I know that. You're better than she is. Let me arrest her. Let the State put her on trial. She'll be convicted—she's confessed! She'll go to jail for the rest of her life, Daisy. She'll have a whole lifetime to think about what she's done. And you'll be free.”

“No.”

“You kill her and your life will be over. You'll be finished and you'll deserve to be.”

Quieter now: “No.”

“Let her go and you can start again. You can try to make things right.”

“Will I bring Jill back?”

“You didn't kill her.”

“I helped. I did my part.”

“She was a drug addict before you ever met her, Daisy. You understand that disease. You've lived that life. But you have changed. This nightmare has changed you, Daisy. I can see that. Anyone could see that. You're like…a clay pot. You've been fired in the kiln, and you didn't crack. Don't crack now. You're one flick of your wrist away from losing everything.”

“I've got nothing.”

“You have friends—David and Kathleen…me. You have a chance to walk away from the past and you have the future. You can make that future into anything you want.”

“But first I have to want it.”

“Yes. First you have to want it.”

“But I don't.”

“If that were true you would have let yourself go down with the ship. You'd have killed Sue Ann already. But you haven't done any of those things. Your hand is shaking. You think you want to do it but you can't. Pell is finished. He and his cronies are going to be in jail for the rest of their lives. It's like—the Berlin Wall finally came down.”

“People hated it when the Berlin Wall came down. I read about that. They thought they'd be happy but they weren't.”

“At first. But then they started living. Start living, Daisy. It beats the alternative.”

That tricked a tiny smile out of her. “I want a front seat at this bitch's trial. I want to see her face when the judge reads the sentence.”

“Done.”

“You promise?”

“It's easy.” I thought of Dave Carmichael. “I have friends in high places.”

Sue Ann stared down, silent and defeated, no more moves to make, no more angles to play. Daisy dropped the knife and let herself cry. She cried for most of the trip back, deep shuddering sobs, but her eyes were dry when we pulled into the Easy Street public landing.

She was a survivor. She'd be fine.

Chapter Thirty-five

The Phoenix

We drove back to the station, where I took a long hot shower, found some dry clothes, booked Pell and Su Ann, and arranged to set Berman free on his own recognizance. Kathleen Lomax came to the station to pick up Daisy. I headed home for a night with the kids. “Kidding” as Haden Krakauer liked to put it. It was anything but a joke—I was exhausted, wrung out, pounded flat. I almost called Miranda and asked her to take them for the night, but I knew what her answer would be. The last thing I needed was an argument or a guilt trip.

I thought about Dave Carmichael—his office would handle the Pell case from now on. It was out of my hands. Guilt would be tested and justice dispensed elsewhere. My part was done. I was a bystander again—a passenger, as Phelan had so aptly put it. Soon the island would subside into its normal somnolent rhythms…the odd domestic disturbance or DUI, barfight or B&E. While we slowly nodded off again into our small-town nap, Carmichael would be finding the big cases, important cases, and someone would be investigating them. It wouldn't be me.

The old jailhouse sulk had begun again. The kids kept me tethered to this place, to this dead-end career—nothing else.

Then Caroline got sick.

She felt queasy at dinner, and she woke up at two in the morning with the bug raging.

“Daddy,” she cried out of sleep. “Daddy!”

I rolled out of bed and ran to the room she shared with Timmy, charged with adrenaline but still thinking somewhere: “She called for me, not her mom.” It made sense—she was at my house not her mother's—but she could have called for Miranda anyway. I would have phoned Miranda and awakened her and she would have come over, driving on the nighttime roads in her PJs. But that wasn't going to be necessary.

Because Caroline called for me.

I got her downstairs and into the narrow little bathroom, and she projectile vomited all over the walls before I could guide her to the toilet. I held her hair back, talked her through it, gave her a cool glass of water, helped her navigate her way back upstairs, put a lobster pot near the bed in case there was another emergency, and read her to sleep.

Then I went downstairs and started cleaning up.

And that's where it happened. I was on my knees, scrubbing my daughter's puke off the bathroom walls at three in the morning and I realized—I would much rather be doing this than investigating bank fraud in Boston.

This was where I belonged.

I was in the right place, doing the right thing.

I finished up and went to bed, feeling a satisfied exhaustion, a quiet, resonant bliss and something else, something more—gratitude, perhaps. The resentment was gone, banished in the space of an hour. And I felt pretty sure it was never coming back.

***

“I told you so!” said Jane Stiles. “Everything did tie together, two ways! Todd Macy and Oscar Graham and the house fire and the drugs and porn mess, and—and Andy Thayer—all of it! Just like in my books. Sorry.”

We were standing in the moors, watching Pat Folger's crew as they pushed the frame of the rebuilt Thayer cottage vertical and banged it into place, the rhythmic clatter of hammers reverberating in the clear summer air. It was a cool, dry day, more like early fall than high summer. Caroline was holding one of my hands and Tim grasped the other. Debbie Garrison stood next to him. That seemed to have worked out nicely. David Trezize and Kathleen Lomax hovered at the edge of the clearing with Daisy. He was taking pictures for the paper. Everyone else just wanted to mark the occasion.

Haden Krakauer strolled up to me. “I was thinking about that prothonotary warbler,” he said. “The bird that nailed Sue Ann Pelzer. It got Alger Hiss, too. Did you know that? True story.”

“Alger Hiss? The spy?”

“Well…he was accused of selling nuclear secrets to the Russians. During the House Un-American Activities Committee hearings in 1948, Whittacker Chambers claimed that he and Hiss had been friends as members of the Communist party. Hiss denied it, but Chambers told the committee that Hiss was a birder and he'd mentioned sighting a prothonotary warbler—told Chambers all about it. Anyway, that's how the committee knew Hiss was lying. The bird gave him away! He knew Chambers and that proved he committed perjury. And that meant he was a communist and probably a spy, like you say. He went to jail for perjury. They would have tried him on espionage charges, but the statute of limitations ran out. Still, the point is…he was busted by a bird! That was a big moment for ornithologists, let me tell you.”

We contemplated the peculiarities of fate for a few moments. A rare bird-sighting, a freak rainstorm, and a new suede jacket had done in Sue Ann Pelzer and revealed her true self. I thought of Chuck Obremski, my old boss in L.A. He used to say, “Nothing is what it seems, everything is different under the surface. Blueberries are green. Peel one, K. See for yourself.”

It was easy to guess wrong about people. Pell was so much worse than he seemed. Maybe Daisy was better. I hoped so.

Haden was watching a turkey buzzard circling overhead. “I guess birding helps in police work sometimes, Chief, just like poetry.”

I patted him on the shoulder. “Absolutely.”

Joyce Garrison and her two brothers had also come to watch, along with various town officials. It was a big moment. The Land Bank was donating the property to the Conservation Commission, creating a massive swath of land that would never be developed. They had agreed to give the Thayer family life rights to the use of the cottage. The good guys won.

Jane leaned against me as Billy Delavane set a ladder against the gable end of the house, climbed to the top of the raw plywood structure and nailed a holly branch to the peak. Pat Folger unpacked champagne and paper cups. He poured out the wine for a toast as Billy climbed back down and scooped Debbie up into a hug.

“The Thayer cottage—rising like a Phoenix from the ashes!” Pat said, lifting his paper cup. “With a little help from the best goddamn carpentry crew on the island.”

“Amen,” said Billy.

It was getting late in the afternoon, though the sun was still high. I said to the kids, “How about a Pi Pizza?”

“Just a salad for me,” Caroline said.

Tim said, “Can Jane come?”

I nodded. “Absolutely.” And softly, to Jane: “You're in.”

We walked back to the car, through the rosa rugosa and poison ivy and wildgrape vines, and it felt good, being awake after a deep thirsty night's sleep, submitting finally to the simple animal pleasure of the cool air on my skin, the dazzle of the sun in my eyes, the glitter of light on Polpis Harbor through the scrub pines, my weight pressing down smoothly through the linked system of joints, pressing my feet against the ground, gravity like some filmy adhesive, barely attaching me to the world.

I was unshackled and so was the land, forever wild thanks to that tragic beautiful unbowed elemental giant, Liam Phelan, whose body was caught in the gulf stream, heading south into the tropics probably, never to be found.

I thanked him silently one more time, and then we drove away.

Chapter Thirty-six

Pilgrims

After the harbormaster pulled Oscar Graham's body from the Saltmarsh creeks, after the drug overdose and Jill Phelan's death, after the arson and the murders of Todd Macy and Andrew Thayer, after the sinking of the
Nantucket Grand
, and the arrests and the news reports, there was a teenage boy, on a high summer afternoon, sitting in Logan Airport rehearsing what he was going to say to the girl he loved.

Jared Bromley had been watching Alana for half an hour. He considered himself an agnostic when it came to fate, but this encounter shook the foundations of his skepticism. He had lost touch with Alana after their investigation blew up. She hated the publicity and associated him with everything bad that happened—Jill's death, Oscar's murder, Ms. DeHart's dismissal, the sex scandal, her new notoriety, everything. He had approached her just once, at Fast Forward. They were both on line for coffee. But the propinquity hadn't helped. She had been cold.

She said, “I don't think we should hang out, Jared. I'm trying to stay out of trouble for a while,” and turned back to her oatmeal cookie.

Rejected for an oatmeal cookie. He left her alone after that. He even stopped writing about her on his blog. He let the blog dwindle; he had other things to write. He was trying to finish as many screenplays as he could before he left for Los Angeles.

Now he had five finished scripts in his suitcase and four thousand dollars that he had managed to save over the last few years zipped into a side pocket of his computer case. It was enough to get started. He knew his scripts were good, but he expected to be rejected for a while. It was the real world, not the psychotic Nantucket dreamscape where girls who couldn't sing or act were given the lead role in school musicals, treated like stars and told they were brilliant. They weren't brilliant and they'd find out the truth if they ever took their stammering, self-conscious, stage non-presence into a Broadway audition room.

Jared had no such illusions. His writing was clumsy in places. His characters talked too much. He had a lot to learn. But he was a quick study and he was persistent. That was the key. If you refused to give up, you were miles ahead of the quitters.

He had left home with little ceremony and hadn't expected to see anyone he knew in the airport. The beauty of airports was the way they extracted you from the familiar. They were the perfect prelude to an adventure, setting you down among fast-moving strangers headed for unknown destinations and making you one of them. He relished the indifferent bustle of Logan. After the unwanted intimacies of a small-town childhood, simply being anonymous gave him a sharp physical pleasure, like climbing out of a car after a long drive.

He watched Alana from the bank of pay telephones.

He remembered the day she had come to work at
Veritas
, two years ago next autumn. They were going to be working together every day, rubbing elbows in the cramped little
Veritas
office. He shouldn't have been looking forward to that; he certainly shouldn't have been happy about it.

But he was. He might as well admit it: he was ecstatic. He was dancing in the snow like an Eskimo Gene Kelly. He twirled and stomped to his truck, a soft shoe seal fisherman in heavy boots and down parka. What an inspired improvisation. What a coup! He was going to be seeing her every day. She would get to know him. His wit and charm and unrivalled paragraphing skills would wear her down, it was only a matter of time.

A car almost hit him: a Buick Riviera from the late nineties. Superintendent Bissell was driving. He slowed down, squinting at Jared's antics. Jared did one more turn and took a bow. He was dizzy, he fell back against his truck. When he caught Bissell's eye, the old man was smiling. He had somehow managed to amuse the school superintendent.

Anything was possible now.

Of course it hadn't quite worked out that way. But now here she was, a pad in her lap, twenty feet away from him, sketching someone, probably the nun in full habit sitting across from her. He loved watching her hand move across the page, the quick confident pen strokes. Her self-assurance gave him the push of confidence he needed. Or maybe it was the half-smile on her face as she worked. Anyway, without making any conscious decision, he walked toward her. The next seat was empty. He sat down. Her eyes flicked to him for a suspicious split second, the stranger who had ignored so many empty seats to crowd her this way. She was probably wishing she'd staked out the seat beside her with her carry-on bag. Then she recognized him.

“Jared!” she said. “What are you doing here?”

“I'm going to Hollywood,” It sounded stupid to him. “Los Angeles, I mean. I'm going to be a screenwriter. Like I always said I would.”

“Wow,” she smiled. She closed her pad and stuffed it into her bag with her pen. “That's incredible, Jared. That's so great. Do you have, like—a job?”

“Nope.”

“Do you have an agent?”

“Nope.”

“So you're just…going out there.”

“That's right. Someone once asked Preston Sturges what he'd do if his movies started to fail and he couldn't get a job and he went bankrupt and wound up on the street. Sturges wasn't worried. He said ‘I'd buy a ten-cent pad and a two-cent pencil and start all over again.' That's how I feel…the modern version, with a used laptop and an ink jet printer. It beats sitting at home and thinking about it.” He sat back, a little winded, feeling he'd said too much. “What about you?”

“It's really weird. This movie director was visiting Nantucket, the one who helped Chief Kennis with the case. He saw some cartoon of mine in
Veritas,
and he just called out of nowhere to offer me a job working for him, drawing storyboards. Is that bizarre? I Googled him, he was for real. So I said yes.”

“So something good came out of all this.”

“I hate thinking that way.”

“Don't say that. Jill would be happy to know something turned out okay. She always said you should get off the rock.”

“Yeah. I guess.”

Jared shook his head. “I can't believe you didn't tell me about this.”

“I wanted to, but everything got so weird between us, and I wasn't sure how—”

“E-mail is safe.”

“I'm sorry.”

She touched his knee. He jumped as if she had spilled hot coffee on him and they both laughed.

“So we'll be out there together,” she said.

“Yeah.”

“I was getting a little nervous. I've never been west of…well, of Hyannis, actually. Which is pathetic.”

“Me, neither. No, no, my parents took me to Philadelphia when I was six. But that's it.”

“We can cling together for warmth—that's what my dad always says when he and my mom are at a party where they don't know anyone. Like they were in a life raft or something. Not that it's ever actually cold out there. Mark Toland—he's my boss, the director?—Mark says it hit ninety degrees last February.”

“It sounds nice to me. I won't miss the snow, I'll tell you that much.”

“Me, neither.”

“I'm not going to miss Nantucket in February, just in general.”

“Or being hassled constantly by those State Police with the jack boots and the buzz cuts. Ugh. We were having a party on the beach last summer and they made us pay a hundred dollars each because you need a permit or something if there's more than ten people. I was like, ever read the Constitution? There's something called freedom of assembly. Well, I
didn't actually say that. But I wanted to.”

“That's something I won't miss—freedom of assembly for rich people only.”

“How about—just two stupid movie theatres all winter long?”

“And going standby on the steamship.”

“And having to use air freight if you want a Chinese dinner.”

“And ticks and mildew”

“And Lyme's and babesiosis.”

“But you know what I want to get away from most? This will sound weird.”

She sat forward a little. “Tell me.”

“The stars. I mean it. I'm so sick of seeing all those fucking stars every night and the way people from the city ooh and aah over them. You know why we can see the stars on Nantucket? Because there's nothing interesting enough here to block them out.”

She laughed out loud. “Oh, my God, I can't believe you actually said that! I feel exactly the same way. I even wrote it in my diary. I have to show you. Almost those exact words.”

“Wow.”

They stared at each other, suddenly off balance. Before either one of them could say anything else, their flight was called, first-class passengers ahead of everyone else.

“That's me,” Alana said, standing. “How are you going?”

“Steerage, I think. In the baggage compartment with the dogs.”

She laughed. “Well…see you on the other side.”

She lifted a hand. He almost stood. But she started walking away before he could move. She turned back once and smiled at him, though. He took that smile with him onto the plane and into his narrow window seat, and tucked it around him with the thin airline blanket when he fell asleep, with his tiny pillow pressed against the humming Plexiglas.

Maybe anything was possible after all.