Silver Girl (10 page)

“Oh,” Connie said. “Yes, absolutely. That would be wonderful.”

“Okay,” the chief said. “Your first priority will be getting the paint off your house, and our first priority will be finding out who did this.”

“There’s something I should explain,” Connie said.

“And what’s that?” he asked.

“Meredith Delinn is staying here.”

“Meredith Delinn?”

“Yes. She’s the wife of…”

“I know who she is,” the chief said. “She’s staying
here?
”

“She’s a friend of mine from growing up,” Connie said. “We’ve been friends forever.”

The chief removed a pen from his back pocket and started taking notes. (What would he write?
BFF?
) He said, “Well, that explains things a little bit, doesn’t it? Explains them but doesn’t excuse them. We’ll do what we can to find out who did this and to make sure it doesn’t happen again. I’ll start by putting a squad car on this road every hour throughout the night. Do you mind if I speak to Mrs. Delinn?”

“Um,” Connie said. Meredith was still in her nightgown, and Connie was protective and suspicious. This guy
was
the chief of police, but what if he turned around and sold the story to the
National Enquirer
? “Just a minute. Let me ask her.”

The chief nodded. “I’ll call my power-washer connection from my car. I take it you’d like him here as soon as possible?”

“Yes,” Connie said. “Thank you.” She was trying not to look at the front of her house. That poisonous green, the absurd size of the letters, the ugly word. It was a scream, written on her house.
CROOK
.
People had called Richard Nixon a crook. John Dillinger had been a crook. Bonnie and Clyde. But none of those people had been a crook like Freddy Delinn.

“Meredith?” Connie said. She saw that Meredith had gone upstairs and changed into what Connie thought of as her Doomsday outfit: her white button-down shirt, now a little wrinkled, jeans, suede flats. Already, it was too warm for the jeans. “The chief of police is here. He has questions for you. Is that okay?”

Meredith nodded.

“You don’t have to talk to him,” Connie said.

“I will.”

Connie beckoned the chief inside, and the three of them sat at the dining-room table.

Connie said to the chief, “Can I get you some coffee?”

The chief held up a hand. “I’ve already had my three cups.”

“Ice water then?”

“I’m all set, thanks,” the chief said.

Connie brought a pitcher of ice water and three glasses to the table nonetheless. She poured herself a glass, returned to the counter where she sliced a lemon and put the slices in a shallow bowl. The three of them were sitting in a house that screamed
CROOK
,
but there was no reason they couldn’t be civilized.

“So,” the chief said. “You’re in luck. I’ve gotten hold of a man to do the power washing. He’ll be here before noon today, he said.”

“Excellent, thank you,” Connie said.

The chief lowered his voice to speak to Meredith. He was responding to the situation, or to her pinched face, which was drained of all color. Or he was responding to her diminutive size—five foot one, a hundred pounds. Meredith had complained all her life that her petite stature caused people to treat her like a child.

“Do you have any idea who might have done this?” the chief asked her.

Connie couldn’t help herself from interjecting. “Well, yesterday, something happened.”

“What happened yesterday?” the chief said.

“Someone left an envelope on my front porch,” Connie said. “And in the envelope was this photograph.” She slid both the photograph and the envelope across the table.

The chief studied the photograph. “So you don’t know who took this?”

Connie shook her head. “It was just left on our porch. Like someone was telling us they knew Meredith was here. It was creepy.”

“Creepy,” the chief agreed. “You should have called us then.”

Connie felt a flash of triumph. Meredith cast her eyes down at the table.

“We figured out it was a photographer dressed as a seal,” Connie said. “It was taken from the water, night before last, around six o’clock.”

“And then it was left on your porch. You found it when?”

“Yesterday morning.”

“Yesterday morning. And you didn’t call the police. And now this morning you have this vandalism.”

Meredith said, “I’m sorry. I should have let Connie call the police. She wanted to. But I didn’t want anyone to know I was here.”

The chief took a noticeable breath. “You’ll forgive me for being indelicate and asking the obvious. Are any of your husband’s former investors living on Nantucket that you know of?”

Meredith raised her face to the chief. Her expression was so blank, Connie was scared.

“Mary Rose Garth lost forty million. The Crenshaws lost twenty-six million; Jeremy and Amy Rivers lost nine point two million; the LaRussas lost six million and so did the Crosbys and so did Alan Futenberg. Christopher Darby-Lett lost four and a half million.”

The chief scribbled. “These people live on Nantucket?”

“They’re summer residents,” Meredith said. “The Rosemans lost four point four, the Mancheskis lost three eight, Mrs. Phinney lost three five; the Kincaids, the Winslows, the Becketts, the Carlton Smiths, Linsley Richardson, the Halseys, the Minatows, and the Malcolm Browns all lost between two and three million. The Vaipauls, the McIntoshes, the Kennedys, the Brights, the Worthingtons…”

Connie sucked down a glass of cold water and tried not to let her surprise show. She had no idea so many of Freddy’s investors were on this island. She and Meredith were sitting in the heart of enemy territory.

The chief left an hour later with a list of fifty-two names of Nantucket summer residents who had lost over a million dollars in Freddy’s scam. He couldn’t question any of them without probable cause, but it was good to have the list to reference, he said. Of course, he pointed out, it wasn’t certain that the vandal was an investor; there were all kinds of creeps in the world. The chief was taking the photograph and the envelope with him. The main thing, he said, was that Connie and Meredith should try to relax while remaining vigilant. The house had an alarm system, though Connie had never felt the need to set it. Nantucket—and Tom Nevers in particular—was so safe! She would set it tonight; she would set it from now on.

“And we’ll send a squad car out like I promised,” the chief said. “Every hour on the hour throughout the night.”

“Thank you,” Connie said. She hated to see him go. He was the first man to help her in this kind of practical way since Wolf had died. And he was handsome. She checked for a wedding ring. He wore a solid gold band—of course. Chiefs of police were always happily married, with a couple of kids at home. That was as it should be. Still, Connie was pleased with herself for noticing him. It felt like some kind of progress.

Less than an hour later, there was a knock at the door, and both Connie and Meredith froze. They were still at the dining-room table, drinking coffee and letting their bowls of cereal grow soggy. Meredith was talking in circles—mostly about the investors who lived on Nantucket. She only knew a few of them personally. She, of course, knew Mary Rose Garth (net loss $40 million); everyone in New York society knew Mary Rose Garth, the anorexically thin, sexually lascivious rubber heiress. She had served on the board of the Frick Collection with Meredith.

And Jeremy and Amy Rivers (net loss $9.2 million) had been friends of Meredith’s from Palm Beach.

Meredith told Connie that she had met Amy Rivers during a tennis clinic at the Everglades Club. Amy had a high-powered job for a global consulting firm; she had gone to Princeton three years behind Meredith, though Meredith didn’t remember her. But they bonded over their equally pathetic backhands and their mutual admiration of the tennis pro’s legs, and became casual friends. Amy traveled all the time for business—Hong Kong, Tokyo, Dubai—but when next she was in Palm Beach, she called Meredith to go to lunch. They sat out on the patio at Chuck and Harold’s—very casual, very friendly—but at the end of the lunch, Amy bent her head toward Meredith as if to confide something. Meredith was wary. Palm Beach was a vicious gossip town. Meredith was okay with accepting confidences, but she never, ever told any of her women friends a single thing about her personal life.

Amy said, “I have money to invest. In the neighborhood of nine million. Do you think there’s any way I could get into your husband’s fund? I hear his returns are unbelievable.”

“Oh,” Meredith said. She felt a bit deflated. She had thought that Amy Rivers had chosen to befriend her because she recognized Meredith as being in a category above the run-of-the-mill Palm Beach matron. While it was true Meredith didn’t teach anymore, she was extremely smart and capable. But now it seemed that what Amy had been after, really, was a way into Delinn Enterprises. The fact of the matter was, Meredith had no say in who was chosen to be an investor. People asked her all the time if she could “get them in” with Freddy; even the cashier at Publix, who had inherited money from her great-uncle, had asked. But when Meredith mentioned these people to Freddy, he always said no. He had some secret set of criteria for accepting investors that he wouldn’t share with Meredith, and quite frankly, she didn’t care. Still, for certain people, she agreed to ask. Although she felt a tiny bit stung by Amy Rivers, Meredith promised to lobby Freddy on her behalf. Amy clapped a hand over her mouth like she had just been named Miss America.

“Oh, thank you!” she said. “Thank you, thank you, thank you! Here’s my card. You’ll let me know what he says?”

When Meredith talked to Freddy about Amy Rivers, Freddy asked who she was.

Meredith said, “A woman I play tennis with at the Everglades. She’s a consultant with Hackman Marr.”

“Hackman Marr?” Freddy said, sounding interested.

“Yes,” Meredith said. “And she went to Princeton, graduated in eighty-five. I had lunch with her today. I really like her.”

“I’m sorry,” Freddy said.

“Sorry about what? You mean you won’t take her on?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“We don’t take investors because we ‘really like’ them,” Freddy said. “We take them on for other reasons.”

“What other reasons?” Meredith asked. “She said she has nine million dollars.” She handed Freddy Amy’s business card. “Will you please think about it? For me, please?”

“For you, please? All right, yes,” Freddy said. “I’ll think about it.”

And voilà! Freddy called Amy Rivers himself and invited her to invest, and Amy sent Meredith a huge bouquet of flowers. They became great friends, playing tennis and meeting for lunch, recommending books, talking about their kids. Amy never again mentioned Delinn Enterprises, Freddy, or her money. And then, of course, there was no money. Amy Rivers lost everything.

Meredith looked at Connie. “I could tell you dozens of stories like that.”

Connie wasn’t sure how to respond. She and Wolf, too, had been investors. She thought that all this talk about other investors might lead to an uncomfortable discussion of their own situation—but Connie was spared this by the knock at the door. It frightened her at first, and it certainly frightened Meredith, but then Connie realized it must be the power washer, and she hurried to greet him.

The man’s name was Danforth Flynn; he told Connie to call him Dan. He was about fifty, with the lean body of a long-distance runner and a permanent sunburn. Again, Connie felt self-conscious. This was the second time this morning that she had a handsome man show up to help her.

Dan Flynn regarded the front of the house and whistled.

“Did the chief explain?” she asked.

“He did.”

“Can you get it off?”

He approached the front of the house and touched a shingle that had been painted. He rubbed his fingers together. “I can,” he said. “What I want you to do is to go inside and close and lock all of the windows on this side of the house. This is going to take me a couple of hours, I’d guess. And it’s going to be loud.”

“No problem,” Connie said.

“Okay,” Dan Flynn said. “I’ll get started. The tank of my truck holds four thousand gallons of water, but this job is so big I may need to hook up to your outdoor spigot to fill my reserve tank. Can you show me where that is?”

“I can,” Connie said. “It’s around here.” She led him to the side of the house and showed him where her garden hose was coiled. He wasn’t looking at the house, however—he was looking at the view of the ocean.

“You have quite a spot,” he said. “In good old Tom Nevers. I forget how breathtaking it can be out here.”

“Yes,” she said. “The land had been in my husband’s family since the nineteen twenties, but we only built the house fifteen years ago. And then my husband died in two thousand nine, so now it’s just me.”

“Funny,” Dan said, still looking at the water. “My wife died in two thousand nine. Breast cancer.”

“Brain cancer,” Connie said.

They were quiet for a moment, and Connie couldn’t help but think of her friend Lizbet who had, for two and a half years, been encouraging Connie to go to a support group so she could meet people who were going through the same thing she was.

Connie looked at Dan Flynn and smiled. “I’ll go take care of those windows,” she said.

“Great,” he said.

Connie bounded into the house. She felt more energized than she had in months.

She closed the windows on the first floor and watched Dan move around his truck, turning knobs, pulling out a thick blue ridged hose. He was wearing jeans and a T-shirt and running shoes. He had a buzz cut, brown hair turning gray, and a day of growth on his face like that newly retired
NFL
quarterback, which she found sexy. Sexy? She couldn’t believe she was thinking this way.

Connie caught sight of herself in the mirror. She had lost a lot of sparkle in the past two and a half years—but did she really look so bad for fifty? Her hair was still strawberry blond, more strawberry in the winter, more blond in the summer. She had her mother’s good genes to thank for that because Veronica had gone to the grave at sixty-eight with a full head of natural red. Connie had green eyes, a light tan, some freckles, some sun spots. Her skin wasn’t great; she had never been able to stay out of the sun. She was out of shape although she was very thin from skipping meals. Her nails were a mess, and her eyebrows. She needed to start taking care of herself again. She needed to exercise.