2

The houses on Martha’s Vineyard are almost uniformly gray.

The shingles weather quickly, buffeted by water and wind, until they attain the silvery hue of a dowager’s hair, and then they seem to stop. Gray was the color that day. Gray shingled houses, and a gray sky, and gray waters lapping inland marshes, rolling in grayly against the shore beaches. The only sunshine that day was the burst of Penny’s hair in the car beside him.

He had rented the Menemsha cottage from a woman named Carol Dubrow, a real estate agent in Chilmark. He had met her briefly the summer before when Mary and he had stopped at her place to pick up the key to the house. He had spoken to her yesterday on the phone, and his memory of the woman had been fortified by the solid ring of her voice. Mrs. Dubrow was in her late sixties, a formidable woman with iron-gray hair and a steel rod down the center of her back. Her eyes were as green as the ocean, and her mouth was a trap rivaling that of any clam in the salt water marshes. She was a tall, spare woman, as weathered as the gray shingles which covered the house she owned.

When Zach pulled into the Dubrow driveway, Penny asked, “Is this our house?”

“No,” he said. “I’ve got to get the key. Want to come inside?”

“I’ll wait in the car,” she said. She leaned over the back seat, picked up a comic book, and was absorbed in it instantly. Zach climbed the steps to the front porch, stopped before the screen door, looked for a bell and, finding none, knocked.

“Come in,” a girl’s voice called.

He opened the screen door.

“In here,” the voice said. “Back of the house.”

He walked through a cool, dim corridor, past an old table with a wired kerosene lamp on it. The house felt moist, the way only an island house can feel on a bad day. He could almost taste salt in the musty air.

The girl was sitting at a desk set into an alcove just outside the kitchen. She sat quite erect at the desk, rapidly writing. She looked up, and he saw the same sea-green eyes that belonged to Mrs. Dubrow. But these eyes were set in an oval face framed with hair as black as sin, as short as virtue. The eyes studied him candidly.

“Yes?” she said.

She was wearing a denim shirt and dungaree trousers, but neither disguised the complete femininity of her body. Looking at her, he tried to decide how old she was, figured she couldn’t be more than nineteen.

“I’m here for the Fielding house key,” he said.

“The Fielding house,” she repeated. She opened the top drawer of the desk. He could see a clutter of tagged keys in the open drawer. She poked among the keys and then lifted a yellow-tagged one out of the pile. The word FIELDING was lettered on the tag. She handed him the key.

“There you are, Mr. Carpenter,” she said.

“The name’s Blake,” he told her, and he turned to go.

“Hey! Wait a minute!”

He looked at her. “What’s the matter?”

“What did you say your name was?”

“Blake. Zach Blake.”

“That’s what I thought you said. You’d better give me that key.”

“What for?”

“The Fielding house was rented to Mr. Carpenter, that’s what for,” she said. Her voice carried complete conviction. She was stating something very plain and very logical. He would have given her the key had he not spoken to Mrs. Dubrow yesterday and wired her $500 immediately afterwards.

“Where’s Mrs. Dubrow?” he said.

“She’s on vacation.”

“Where?”

“Boston.”

“When did she leave?”

“This morning.”

“And who are you?”

“Anne Dubrow. Her daughter.”

“Well, Miss Dubrow, I wired your mother $500 for the Fielding house yesterday morning. If you’ll check—”

“Give me the key,” she said.

“I paid for this key. Check your—”

“I don’t have to check. Our salesman rented the Fielding house to Mr. Carpenter this morning. Went all the way to New Bedford on the ferry to take the deposit. Mr. Carpenter’s got the house until Labor Day.”

“Is he here now?”

“No, he’s in New Bedford. Won’t get here until the day after tomorrow.”

“How much of a deposit did he give?”

“Half the full rental.”

“And how much is that?”

“The full rental is $1500. He gave our salesman $750.”

“Well, you’d better give it back to him,” Zach said patiently. “I called your mother from New York yesterday. I told her I wanted the Fielding house for two weeks, and she said the price was $500. I told her that was a bit steep, but she said she usually rented it for the full season and my wanting it for two weeks would put the kibosh on that, hence the somewhat high—”

“My mother doesn’t talk like that.”

“The language is mine, Miss Dubrow, but the meaning is hers. In any case, I wired her five hundred bucks at eleven o’clock yesterday morning. I don’t know who Mr. Carpenter of New Bedford is, but he’ll have to find himself another house. Good-by.”

She came after him with remarkable swiftness, catching his arm and then whirling him to face the blazing sea-green eyes.

“Just a second, mister!” she said, and he had the feeling she was about to hit him.

“Miss Dubrow—”

“Give me that key,” she said.

“We’re being pretty damn foolish, aren’t we? All you’ve got to do is check your records. You’ll see—”

“All right, come on back in here,” she said. “I know you’re lying, but just to satisfy you, I’ll—”

“I’m not in the habit of being called a liar by a nineteen-year-old kid,” Zach said, annoyed. “I’ll wait until you check, but—” He stopped. Anne Dubrow was smiling. “What the hell’s so funny?”

“What you said. I’ll be twenty-four next week.”

“Happy birthday,” he said. “Let’s get this thing settled.”

They went back to the desk together. She sat behind it and opened a small account book. He spotted his name in it before she did.

“There it is,” he said. “Zachary Blake.”

“Yes,” she said. She had begun biting her lip. “I guess Pete made a mistake,” she said. “This is terrible.”

“Who’s Pete?”

“Pete Rambley, mother’s salesman. I guess he didn’t know the Fielding house had already been rented.” Her eyes were getting troubled. “What do we do now?”

“You call this Mr. Carpenter, whoever he is, and tell him somebody goofed. Tell him you’ve got another house for him. Tell him—”

“I couldn’t do that.”

“Why not?”

“He wants the Fielding house.”

“So do I. And I’ve got priority.”

“But it’s such a big house,” she said. “Are you here with a lot of people or—”

“Just my nine-year-old daughter,” Zach said, “and she’s probably been kidnaped from the car by now. I don’t see what difference the size of my party ma—”

“I thought you might take another house.”

“I want this house.”

“Is your wife with you? Could I speak to her?”

The room was suddenly very still. He could hear bird noises coming from the woods behind the house. He looked at the girl steadily and very slowly said, “My wife drowned in Menemsha Bight last summer.”

The girl seemed shocked for a moment. “Oh,” she said. “Blake. Of course. Mary Blake.”

“Yes.”

“I’m sorry.” She lowered her eyes.

“That’s all right. May I go now?”

“Well … well, I don’t know what to do, Mr. Blake.” She was still staring at the open book, as if unwilling to meet his eyes now that she knew about his wife. “Mr. Carpenter’s coming the day after tomorrow. What shall I tell him?”

“That’s your problem,” he said. “I don’t know, and frankly I don’t give a damn.”

The green eyes flashed up at him with unexpected ferocity. “You’re a pretty bitter person, aren’t you?” Anne Dubrow said.

“Yes,” he answered. “I am. Are we finished?”

“We’re finished,” she said. “Enjoy your stay.”

He turned his back to her and walked out to the car. Penny looked up from her comic book.

“Did you get the key?” she asked.

“Yep.”

He started the car, and began to drive to Menemsha.

There is no going back. One should never go back.

He realized that the instant he saw the house. He drove the car up the rutted sand road and then pulled into the parking space, and the gray shingles of the house reached out to engulf him. Mary was with him again in that moment, sitting beside him, her eyes opening wide in delight as she saw the house and the ocean vista behind it. He could almost hear her voice, almost hear the car door slamming, the sound of her feet on the packed sand as she ran to the back of the house and the porch that overlooked the water.

“Is that it?” Penny asked.

“What?” He turned slowly, staring at her.

“Is this—?”

“Yes,” he said. “Yes.”

She stared at him. “Does it make you sad, Daddy?”

“Yes, darling,” he said. “It makes me very sad.” He clutched her to him suddenly, holding her fiercely, feeling fresh pain, squeezing his eyes shut tightly. She drew away from him slowly and then looked into his face with the wide-open candor of a very young child.

“Why did we come here, Daddy?” she asked.

And because there was honesty on her face and in her eyes, and because he had never lied to his daughter in the short nine years of her life, he held her eyes with his own and whispered, “Because I think your mommy was murdered, Penny.”