Nantucket Grand (9 page)

“So the fire was an act of revolution?”

“A misplaced one. If it was.”

“So, no enemies, no grudges, no stalkers? No bad debts, no ongoing litigation? No squatters? No firebugs in the family?”

“Nothing. No one.”

“You have no idea why someone might have done this?”

“People do crazy things all the time, Chief Kennis. Maybe my house was built on an Indian graveyard. Maybe someone thought aliens were going to be using it for a landing pad. Why speculate? I'd rather look forward and rebuild. I may install some surveillance cameras this time around.”

I stood up. “Well, thanks. If you think of anything else, give me a call.”

“I certainly will.”

I doubted it. He had lied about almost everything else—at least that was my instinct, and I trusted it. But why? That was the question. Who was he protecting, beside the houseguest who ducked out when I arrived? Or maybe protecting her was enough.

I needed to find out who she was, without actually arresting Andrew Thayer. I could set one of the junior officers, maybe Barnaby Toll, to watch the house, and get another one to take down all the license plate numbers in the town parking lot. We might find something out if we ran them all, and it would give the young cops something to do besides writing out parking tickets and answering prank calls.

This mystery woman was my only lead. Without her, my interviews with Thayer were useless: one more set of evasions and half-truths delivered by one more venture capitalist with things to hide—most them, probably all of them, irrelevant.

For the moment, I let it go. My day's work was done. I went home to take a shower and find some civilian clothes. Miranda had the kids that night and I actually had a social engagement, the first one in weeks.

Chapter Ten

At Emily Grimshaw's Salon

I didn't expect to find a clue in that cluttered, hothouse living room, crowded with would-be poets and authors, but until that night I never thought a poem could be a death threat.

Still, if anyone was going to compose such a document, the late Todd Macy's son, Chris, was the guy. A spoiled brat with father issues, though the term probably applied just as well to Lord Byron or Ezra Pound, both of whom (it turned out) Chris used in the poetry workshop he ran at the Community School. Mason Taylor took Chris' workshop and thought he was a genius. There was nothing I could do about that. Maybe he was a good influence when he was sober.

The poem was an odd piece of work, but so were most of the stories and poems people performed at Emily Grimshaw's house. And almost all of them concerned some sort of tortured family relationship. One began: “Daddy, Daddy, Daddy, why are your eyes so silent, why does your mouth refuse me, why are your broken hands fisted with grief?”

There was a limit to how much of that stuff you could listen to, but I still enjoyed attending these soirees. I liked the Bohemian atmosphere, the books and trinkets piled on every surface, the smell of incense. Emily made excellent hors d'oeuvres, and served good wine. She was proud of her little salon and always had a few young writers around that she was mentoring; most of them strapping twenty-year-old boys. They adored Emily and did most of the heavy work, moving furniture and setting up the little apartment for the art installations and readings. It looked like Chris Macy was one of them these days. He had the tormented look she preferred.

He was hauling the big lectern to the arched opening between the bedroom and the living room when I pushed inside out of the cold. Emily, bulky and intense, was talking to Jane Stiles, while Jane's six-year-old son tugged at her pant leg.

“I expect a
real
poem to
change my life
,” Emily was saying. She stepped back from the door. “Oh, hello, Chief—you're late. We're about to start. Shut the door and introduce yourself to anyone you don't know. We have some newbies tonight, and you need to assure them they won't be arrested. I'm going to open more wine.”

She disappeared through the crowd, back toward the kitchen at the far side of the little apartment.

“Something had better change her life,” I said, “as soon as possible.”

Jane smiled. “You came.”

“I wouldn't miss one of Emily's evenings.”

“This is my first. I think she's interesting. Until Emily, I'd never met anyone who wore black as a lifestyle before.”

“There must be more to her lifestyle than that.”

“You're right. I'm being unfair. I shouldn't leave out the self-help seminars, the nuisance lawsuits, and the continuous low-grade nervous breakdown. She feels the pain of the world—which makes her better than you. Just ask her. She calls it
Weltshmertz,
basically because things sound more important when you say them in German. She's in court with her ex over custody of their Siamese cat. That's been going on for six months. Last year she announced that she was the bride of Jesus. But apparently that marriage didn't work out either.”

I smiled, unbuttoning my coat. Emily kept the heat cranked, regardless of the expense. It was one of her few luxuries, and she prided herself on having “thin blood.”

“Jesus, huh?” I said, “Well, it makes sense. The guy's never at home, he's got
issues
with his father, like everyone else here tonight.”

“I can just hear her nagging him—‘Follow
me
, believe in
me
, heed
my
words—it's all about
you
, isn't it?”

I laughed, as much at the perfect shrewish squint on her face as for what she said.

She lifted up her little boy. “This is Sam.” Sam looked away. “He's a little shy.”

I shrugged. “Me, too.”

“It runs in our family. I'm going to have to drink a lot of wine before I try to read anything tonight.”

“Are you embarrassed?”

“No, but I hate reading my stuff aloud. I get so self-conscious. If there's one person yawning or looking bored or something I just feel, you know—what's the point, they all hate it. Which is pretty distracting. I guess I get distracted too easily. A drink or two helps. When I'm drunk I don't care what anyone thinks. I get sort of hostile, in fact. I think stuff like—oh, boy, they thought they were bored before! Wait until they hear
this next part
!”

“I bet no one is actually bored, though. You're the only published writer here.”

“What about you?”

“I don't think three poems in
Mulch
Magazine really count. That was their final issue, anyway. I think I may have killed it.”

“I'll put my detective Maddy Clark on the case.”

“Uh, oh. I'm sure I left some telltale clues lying around.”

She laughed. “Gotta have those telltale clues.”

“Anyway—people yawn because they're tired, not bored. Especially around here. Most of these people worked a ten-hour day today.”

“I shouldn't let it bother me.”

“I'm thirsty, Mommy,” Sam said.

“We'll get you some juice, honey.” She turned back to me. “I'm sorry—”

I held up my hands. “It's okay. I'll see you later.”

Sam led Jane off toward the kitchen, and I moved deeper into the house. I saw a few people I knew: Mike Henderson and his wife, Cindy, clutching a folded piece of paper tonight, but I could tell she wouldn't have the nerve to read. I had seen her here before, with that same look of quiet panic on her face.

Alana Trikilis was sketching, sitting in a corner beside Jared Bromley. No sign of Mason Taylor.

Who else? David Trezize, of course, with another chapter from his divorce novel. He took the podium first, after Emily thanked everyone for coming and announced a “found art” show she would be presenting next month.

David's story was grim. But fortunately, he couldn't take it any more seriously in his writing than he did in my office. Staggering out of a catastrophically bad marriage and flirting ineptly with girls half his age, the narrator was “as horny as a fourteen-year-old boy, and about as likely to get laid.”

Chris Macy laughed at that one. Kathleen Lomax sat near the window at the back of the room, saving David's place. I'm sure she was hoping that the next book would be a more cheerful one, detailing their new relationship. She laughed and applauded with everyone else, so David must have buried the incident with his ex-wife's journal—at least until he turned it into Chapter Twelve.

I didn't see Jane Stiles again until she was picking her way through the people sitting on Emily's floor toward the antique lectern. Sam followed a step behind, clutching Jane's thumb.

Jane's pants, a torn old pair of blue jeans, were a little too big on her, so was the loose white long-sleeved tee-shirt. It was as if she'd recently lost a lot of weight and hadn't bothered with a new wardrobe, though she told me at some point later that she'd worn the same sizes since high school. The clothes contrived to look as if they might just fall off her body at any moment. She slouched a little, as if she wanted to disappear into them. It was only when she stretched her back and squared her shoulders as she prepared to read that I noticed she wasn't wearing a bra. The four buttons that descended from the crew neck were unbuttoned but once again, it seemed negligent rather than intentionally provocative; she was too busy and distracted to bother with them.

She knew how to wait for people's attention. There was complete silence in the room when she finally began.

“This story is part of my new book,
Poverty Point
,” she said. “Spoilers: Don't feel too happy for this girl. She gets murdered in the next chapter.”

Eleanor could see immediately that it was impossible. The box spring was not going to fit up the stairs. It was a queen size and it was just too big. She had an excellent sense of spatial relations, which generally annoyed people. She could fill grocery bags or moving vans with the same gratuitous perfection, fitting an end table or a box of pancake mix into the last little jigsaw gap that no one cared about but her. It was the same with parking. She had a trivial genius for it that made David crazy. Whenever she tried to help him, he would turn icy and polite. Finally he'd say, “You do it, then” and get out of the car. So she did it, but he never paid attention and he never improved. To learn something from her would be a defeat. Blaming her was better. Anything unpleasant made more sense to David if it was someone's fault. She thought about those primitive tribes she had read about in Sociology class at college, where the king was celebrated if the crops were good, and killed when the crops were bad. That was David's kind of world.

“I'm sure we can do this,” he was saying now, squinting up the stairs in the dim hallway light. It was a brilliant, sparkling early November afternoon outside. But not in here. The stuffy, overheated passageway felt like midnight in August. Eleanor yawned. The two moving men shifted from foot to foot awaiting orders.

“It's not going to fit, David,” she said again.

The chapter ended with Eleanor ducking out for a breath of fresh air, overhearing another crazy argument in the street between hopelessly at-odds family members—this one between a father and daughter. Eleanor sees her own life revealed with a shocking clarity, and makes a snap decision:

She turned and started walking, away from the cramped stairwell and the jammed box spring and her waiting fiancée, into the sharp autumn morning and the bright conspiratorial streets of Boston, never once looking back.

When Jane was done she lifted her son into a hug while she endured the applause. I was standing in the doorway to the front hall. She eased past me.

“I have to get Sam home,” she said. “It's past his bedtime.”

“That was great.”

“It was awful. Everyone hated it. I knew they would.”

“I liked it, Mommy,” Sam said. “I thought it was funny.”

Jane replaced a stray hair behind her ear. “My fan club,” she said. Then she was into the hall and helping Sam with his coat.

“I'd like to hear more.”

“And I didn't get to hear any of your poems.”

I was inspired. “Let's have our own private salon. I could come out to your house, bring wine and dinner, and we could read our stuff.”

She touched my arm. “Sounds great. How about next Friday? Phil has Sam on Fridays.”

“Perfect. Any food I should avoid?”

She stood on tiptoes to kiss my cheek. “I eat everything.” She left me to ponder that comment while she took her son and slipped out the door.

I didn't get much time to mull it over, though. Chris Macy stepped up to the lectern and started to read.

Chris looked like his father, the blue eyes set far apart, the wide nose, the thin-lipped mouth. He was even starting to lose his hair in the front the same way his father had, with the same high forehead that made him look like a college revolutionary taking over the science building, especially when he put on his wire-rimmed glasses.

The poem was short, and he chanted it in a soft, singsong monotone that made you feel he was infatuated with every word.

“Patricide”

Yeah, that was the title. It stuck in my mind.

I am all the brothers:

I live their lives,

They remain the same:

I am Alyosha who forgives

I am Dmitiri who takes the blame

It's no use, I still bleed:

I am Ivan, who makes excuses

I am Smerdyakov who does the deed.

I am on fire,

I live the Oresteia

But it's no accident:

I lure Jocasta with purpose

I slaughter Laius

With intent.

After the reading, I got a beer from Emily's fridge and moved between the patches of conversation in the little apartment. Chris stood alone, leaning against a teetering bookshelf, drinking from a bottle of Bud light.

“Interesting poem,” I ventured. Plucking a bacon-wrapped scallop off a tray on the nearest table.

“It was the last thing I wrote before my father died.”

I bit, chewed, and swallowed. “Anything since?”

“Nope.”

“Writer's block?”

“I was always writing for him, I guess. Now I don't know who to write for.”

“So tell me—how did he feel about your patricide poems?”

“He understood metaphor and symbolism.”

“And that was metaphorical and symbolic, what you read tonight.”

“God, yes. I mean, I just lost my father, Chief Kennis. What are you trying to say?”

I took his arm and led him around the corner to the cramped alcove beside the bathroom door. Someone had pulled out a guitar and people were singing in the living room.

“It's possible your father was murdered, Chris.”

“It was a hunting accident!”

“I found a sniper's bullet at the scene. This is shotgun season. And Todd told me you argued about guns all the time. He didn't think the second amendment applied to automatic weapons and stinger missiles. He was more of an organized militia-with-muskets type of guy. But you were hardcore NRA all the way down the line. He told me you had quite a gun collection. Any sniper rifles in there?”

He stared at me. The crowd in the next room applauded the first song. “Do I need a lawyer with me for the rest of this conversation?”

“I don't know. Do you?”

“Jesus Christ. I'm like a guy with a model train set, and you're accusing me of hijacking the Acela! Not to mention the implication that I—that I could have…”