Brenna Speer vouched for her husband’s whereabouts the night before. She knew every hour he’d arisen to pick up their crying baby. Their practice was to take turns, she said.
Klesko and I spoke to her in their tidy kitchen. Her husband, knowing he wasn’t invited to sit in on our interview, had wandered off on some unspecified errand. She made us coffee—never have I welcomed a cup more—and sat across an antique dining room table from us, openly nursing her baby, a little boy. I found the sight of her bare breast and the sound of the infant sucking away discomfiting. I hadn’t imagined I would be squeamish about something so natural.
Being a new father himself, Klesko took it in stride. “What’s his name?”
In the dim kitchen, with only natural light from the windows, dark circles had appeared beneath the new mother’s eyes. She hadn’t washed her hair in days.
“Leo. Justin wanted to go all the way with Leonardo, after his hero—the artist, not the actor—but I put my foot down. Repeatedly. He can be very persistent, as I’m sure you have discovered.”
“Where did you two meet?” Klesko often peppered his interrogations with friendly inquiries to keep the subject off-balance.
“The Rhode Island School of Design. He was studying photography. I was studying painting.”
It was the same college Levandowski had attended—although the Speers were a decade older than Evan had been when he died.
I had noticed some small watercolors on the wall. “Are those yours?”
“No, I stopped painting years ago when I realized that I didn’t have the gift. When I was young, my parents had friends whose daughter wanted to be an opera singer. They sent her to all the best schools in Europe and paid for her living expenses in Milan and Naples. But as good as she was, she lacked that special something. And sadly, she couldn’t bring herself to admit the truth. Maybe her parents couldn’t, either. I decided I never wanted to be a mediocre opera singer, never wanted to be that woman. Justin is the one with the special talent, and I am content being his helpmate.”
I leaned my elbows on the creaking table. “What do you think of his series of photographs of the Baker Island scientists?”
“They’re genius. And it’s a shame he’ll never be able to show them now.”
“What do you mean?” asked Klesko.
“No respectable gallery would put on an exhibit of pictures of people who’d been murdered. Clay was pilloried for Children in Their Caskets, and his models were only pretending to be dead.”
“The pillorying couldn’t have hurt too much,” I said. “Wasn’t there a bestselling book published of those photos?”
“Sometimes books sell because the media is obsessed with a scandal and everyone is talking about it. Mapplethorpe, back in the 1980s, for instance. Jesse Helms should have gotten a cut of the profits from the sales of Mapplethorpe’s portraits.”
“I’m sorry,” interrupted Klesko, “but I’m not up on contemporary art. What is Children in Their Caskets?”
When she laughed, I saw she had a fetching gap between her front teeth. “I can imagine how the name of that series must sound out of context.”
Brenna then gave us a quick description of the exhibit and the ensuing firestorm that put Clay Markham back on the cover of Time magazine, after decades.
“The series he’s doing now is titled My Atrocities,” she said. “I haven’t seen any of the images, and Justin won’t tell me the details. Clay made him sign a new nondisclosure agreement, in addition to the others we’ve both previously signed. Justin will only say that the new photographs make Children look like Norman Rockwell images.”
“Do you have a copy of Markham’s book from that coffin exhibition?” Klesko glanced around as if it might be sitting on a countertop or the flour-dusted sideboard.
“God, no!” Then, seeing that her answer puzzled us, she added, “Justin was Clay’s primary assistant on those shoots. That project dominated every aspect of our life, our first year here. I did the makeup on the kids. It was fun at the time. We all laughed like it was some parlor game. Then I saw the photos Clay took, and I’ve never been more terrified in my life. It was like a fortune-teller had foreseen the hour of my death. I never, ever need to see Echo Goodale playing dead again in a coffin.”
Klesko’s phone rang. He excused himself to take the call, which, I had a feeling, was either from his wife or the attorney general, or maybe the medical examiner, since there was no one else whom he would’ve allowed to interrupt an interrogation.
I am usually fine at making small talk, not great but fine. But while Brenna and I were alone, I found myself at a loss for words. She watched me with such intense concentration.
“So you and Stacey are a couple?” she said after a spell.
“Why do you say that?”
“Justin saw you and she together on Baker. When I saw her come ashore here, I was thinking we must be close to the same age. Ayers Island is a lonely place to be a young woman. Skip and Dorothea Ayers are so ancient and not what you would call intellectuals. The Goodales are free-spirited, theatrical people. Even if one of the girls was older, I doubt we’d connect. That leaves Clay and his wife, Alyce. The Markhams had fascinating lives and tell great stories, but they’re not the kind of people you invite over for burgers and beers. As for Clay’s personal assistants, the less said the better.”
With Klesko gone, she’d let her guard down. I decided to capitalize on the opportunity. “Is that guy Heath one of Markham’s assistants?”
“He works up at the manse, yes.”
A goat bleated outside the window. It sounded like a lamb that had lost sight of its mother.
“It must be weird for you,” Brenna said.
“What must be weird?”
“Being a game warden caught up in this. You must be used to working in the North Woods. You must feel out of your element here, on an incestuous offshore island like Ayers.”
“I’ve worked on an offshore island before. And there are plenty of incestuous villages in the North Woods, too.”
Brenna showed me her fetching smile again. “Ayers isn’t as uniquely peculiar as I’d thought, then.”
“It’s not like anyplace else I’ve been in Maine. I’ll say that for it. But I’m interested in hearing why you describe the island as incestuous.”
Without breaking eye contact, she detached her infant from her breast. “I’ve already said too much. I’ll be stoned to death if I share any of my neighbors’ actual secrets with you. There may only be a dozen or so people living on this rock, but we’re a diverse cast of characters, I’ll say that much for us.”
“Who’d throw the first stone?”
“Nice try.”
“How about this, then. Did you speak with Maeve McLeary when she was here yesterday?”
The question caught her off guard. She pursed her lips and turned her attention to the baby. I could sense her thoughts quickening.
“She only ever comes here to speak with Clay and Alyce. The rest of us don’t interest her, not being rich enough to support her puffin research. I saw her walk past the house on her way up the hill, but that was all.”
“Did you see her again when she left?”
“No.”
“Did you mark the time you heard her boat leave the harbor?”
“Why would I have done that?”
Now I felt guilty to be grilling Brenna in Klesko’s absence. The chance had presented itself, I would tell him in my defense. What was I to do?
“Speaking of boats,” I said, “does the Spindrift belong to you and Justin, or has he been borrowing it from someone else?”
Another careful pause as, like a chess player, her mind explored every possible move and countermove.
“It’s Alyce Markham’s boat,” she said at last. “Her personal runabout. But she lets anyone use it who wants to—almost anyone—since she rarely takes it out anymore. The keys are in a lockbox down at the wharf. But everyone knows the combination.”
“Who else has been using it lately, aside from your husband?”
“I’m not sure I would know.”
Interesting turn of phrase.
“You haven’t seen anyone other than Justin driving the Spindrift in the last week?”
“If I did, I can’t remember.”
Klesko appeared in the doorway, the phone still pressed to his ear, and beckoned to me. Clearly something pressing had come up. More pressing than our interview.
“Thank you for your time, Brenna,” I said. “Detective Klesko and his partner might have more questions for you and Justin. But I imagine you don’t have plans to leave the island.”
She put the infant against her shoulder. “We were just discussing that subject this morning. But no, we’re not going anywhere—not today at least.”
“I would plan on sticking around the island until the detectives conduct all of their interviews. It’ll be easier if they don’t need to chase after you and Justin with any additional questions they might have.”
“Speaking of plans,” she said, patting the infant’s back.
“Yes?”
“I don’t know who you and the detective are planning on interrogating next. But I would recommend you hike up to the manse, and not just because your girlfriend’s there. The Markhams think they know everything that goes on among us ‘cottagers,’ but they don’t, not by a long shot. That said, you’re never going to begin to understand our little hamlet until you speak with the lord and lady of Ayers Island, as your friend Spinney called them.”