For as long as he could remember, Joe Silva loved the morning. This was when he did his best thinking, when he set the rhythm of his day and the tenor of his work. In this he was no different from generations of Silvas before him, and he often thought of them as he drove to the station. As a boy in the summer, he had accompanied his father and uncles out to sea with the fishing fleet, and heard the stories, some true, some not, all exciting, of ancestors long gone. It had taken him only a few trips as a youngster to learn that the stories people on land told about heroic deeds and survival on the raging Atlantic weren't originally meant to entertain; they were meant as warnings of what you could expect if you took one too many risks, got sloppy, or lost interest in what you were doing for a second. And some were just reminders of the insignificance of human beings. He had forgotten a lot of the tales until he met in Mellingham men who had worked as boys on boats in his father's fleet. Listening to them some summer mornings brought back the songs and stories, the voices rising from the machines and nets, like whales rising and dipping in the sea. Perhaps that was why he had always thought it odd that landlubbers expected listeners to look the storyteller in the eye and watch his face while he spoke.
Whenever he caught himself thinking like this, he remembered how long it had been since he had walked out before dawn with his father. Now his brothers and cousins took their sons as his father had taken him. He did not regret stepping out of the line of men walking to the docks, but he thought of them in the morning, when he could smell the incoming tide or hear a small boat put-putting slowly out of the harbor. Sometimes, while standing in the parking lot by the harbor on a windy day, when the wind mixed the exhaust of a car with the salt of the ocean mist, he forgot for a second where he was and sent his thoughts to test his feet, finding where they were and how they felt. He even once caught the last turn of a horn far away as he stood near an open window in a cold snap and heard his unconscious report aloud, legs okay, feet okay, toes okay. But he never tried to unlearn what had been for his people a survival skill and he wondered at how his mind worked even now, on and on, along the first path his training had cut for him as a child.
Chief Silva pulled into his parking space behind the station, watching the sun wash into the corners between the houses across the harbor. The fleet had left two hours earlier; six-thirty in the morning wasn't early for a fisherman. He listened to the gulls squawking overhead; dirty birds, he thought to himself as he walked up the steps.
Silva recited the names of the suspects to himself as he let the screen door of the station slam behind him. He was glad to see Dupoulis already in his office, hunched over his desk. The younger man sat with a pile of statements in front of him and made an occasional note on a sheet of paper beside him. When he had finished, he scanned his notes and sat back. He again looked over the list and checked off several items. After considering these he stepped into the chief's office and explained what he had been doing.
"You asked me what they talked about at the party," Dupoulis said. "I went through the statements, jotting down whatever was still in the formal statement, and people mentioned the usual things." He held up the sheet of paper.
"What did you come up with?"
"Well, as I said, the usual," the sergeant replied. "Who's doing what to their home, who changed jobs."
"All normal," Silva said. "No gossip you hadn't heard?"
"Just about the woman who wants to open a Bible school," Dupoulis said.
Silva raised an eyebrow and Dupoulis said, "She's been saved three times according to one of the guests."
"So?"
"So nothing, sir," Dupoulis said. "But usually she wants to open a day-care home, then she gets saved and wants to open a Bible school."
"I got it," Silva said. "That's why she keeps withdrawing her application and then resubmitting it." He shook his head and smiled. "What else?"
"Lots about bird feeders," Dupoulis said. "Mostly when Mr. Handel was around, which probably explains it."
"Have you seen any of his contraptions?"
"No, sir, but I've heard about them from the neighbors. You sent me out on a few calls when a neighbor complained that Handel's yard was so ugly it was lowering all the property values on the street."
Silva laughed. "I remember. I suppose we shouldn't be surprised if the subject comes up when Mr. Handel's around." He chuckled, then said, "What else?"
"The weather."
"Really?" Silva said in mock surprise, then looked at this sergeant more carefully. "Why does that matter, Sergeant? What exactly were they talking about?"
"Mostly about the blizzard of '78," the sergeant replied.
"Hmmph," said Silva, unable to think of any reason to find this suspicious. "What else?"
"The tax rate," Dupoulis said, "and some of the guests thought the police would like to know in detail how they felt about it." Both men smiled. Silva was warned when he first resigned in favor of a small-town force that he would have to listen to a lot of talk about property values. The better off the town, the more they talk about taxes, his supervisor at the time had told him. And he'd been right.
"What's next?" Silva asked.
"Mrs. Vinton's anniversary came up a few times," Dupoulis said. "And I do find that strange. It's not as though she's an old townie having her fiftieth wedding anniversary in the next few days."
"You're right," Silva said, thinking this over. "Maybe we should bring it up and see what people say about it spontaneously. What else came up?"
"The new men and women's clothing shop," Dupoulis said. "Apparently the clothes are very high priced and no one likes that but they like the clothes."
"You must have really enjoyed reading those statements. Give you a chance to improve your sartorial knowledge," he said, alluding to Dupoulis's well-known penchant for day-glo T-shirts, which had become his off-duty uniform. His fellow officers never resisted making a comment when they saw him thus attired.
Dupoulis looked down at his chief and said, "Right, sir. You want to hear anything more?"
"Go on, Sergeant," Silva said, amused at his sergeant's thin skin.
"A book," Dupoulis said obliquely, glaring at the chief.
"All right, Sergeant, no more comments on your taste," Silva said pacifically. "What book?"
"The victim's."
"Really?" Silva said, swiveling his chair so he faced Dupoulis directly. "Several other people were discussing this?"
"Yes, sir," the sergeant said. "At least, they remembered it when we questioned them about the evening."
"That's interesting," Silva said, recalling his conversation with Bob Chambers.
"Maybe the victim kept bragging about it. That would explain why everyone remembered it."
"Or maybe she just wanted someone to think she had a book in progress," Silva said, thinking this over quietly.
"It sounds pretty definite, according to some of these statements," Dupoulis said. "At least, the party guests took the idea seriously."
"I got a different impression from Bob Chambers." Silva told Dupoulis about his conversations with the editor.
"Could she have had someone else interested in it?" Dupoulis asked.
"Maybe, but I got the feeling from all of this that all her talk about a book may have been a ruse," Silva said.
"A what?"
"A ruse. A trick," Silva said absently, his mind now moving in another direction. "Check with the caterers and see how many of them can confirm Chambers's story about going back and waiting in the living room."
Silva stretched out his hand for Dupoulis's notes and looked again at the list, envying those on the force who felt they could tell intuitively who was guilty and who was innocent, although those people tended to think everyone was guilty of something. He might promote the role of logic as a tool in police work, but he often wished there were an easier way. He copied the list of topics into his notebook.
"Got any ideas yet or is that off-limits for now?" Dupoulis asked.
"Not off-limits. What've you got on your mind?" Silva asked.
"The murderer. It seems to me we can narrow down our list of possibles to Howard O'Donnell, Frank Vinton, Lee Handel, Mr. Morrison, and Bob Chambers."
"That's all?" Silva asked.
"Well," Dupoulis said, pausing. "You're right, chief. You think I'm assuming that the person in pants who followed the victim to the guest cottage was the murderer."
"Are you?"
"I guess I am," Dupoulis admitted, "and I'm assuming that it's a man."
"You're leaving out a few other women who wore pants," Silva replied.
"We checked with the caterers. All the women wore skirts. In addition to Mrs. Handel, only three women guests wore pants. But there's nothing there. We've checked their background and their connections with the victim," Dupoulis said, "and we can't find anything linking Beth O'Donnell with any of them except Mrs. Handel."
"Okay," Silva said. "Any chance, in your view, of any of the other women guests changing clothes and coming back?"
"You mean a guest who left early, went home, changed, and then came back? Someone who didn't expect to see Beth O'Donnell at the party and then decided to take advantage of her being there?" Dupoulis said, trying out this new idea. "Doesn't sound realistic," he said after thinking it over. "But I suppose it is possible."
"A woman could have gone home and come back and waited for the victim to leave the party," Silva speculated.
"But she still would have had a hard time getting around the house without being seen," Dupoulis said. "That side of the house was under the eyes of the caterers the whole night. Anyone who had wanted to sneak back in would have been spotted. She would have had to hide in the bushes somewhere on the chance that the victim would come out alone and walk to the cottage."
"You're right," Silva agreed. "It's not a strong possibility, but it is still a possibility. And we have to check out everything."
"Okay," Dupoulis said. "I'll check the people who left early and see if there's anything there."
"Good. Now let's go at it from another direction," Silva said. "Suppose we leave out the person in pants. Who else becomes a suspect then?"
"Lisa Hunt, Merrilee O'Donnell, Medge Vinton, Hannah Handel, Mrs. Morrison, Mrs. Miles, and the caterers. It could get to be a long list."
"The Morrisons are probably out of the running," Silva said.
"Did you interview them yesterday at the inn?" Dupoulis asked. He had been leaning against the doorjamb inside the tiny office, but with Silva's contribution he eagerly stepped into the room. Silva moved the folders that had been piled on the second chair and Dupoulis sat down.
"I thought I'd take your advice about seeing them separately," the chief said, "since you were sure they were hiding something."
"I was," the sergeant said. "But I couldn't tell what it might be. What did you find out?"
"Talking to Mr. Morrison in the lounge at the Agawam Inn reminded me that people live on different levels, Ken," the chief said. "You were right about their hiding something, as much from themselves as from us."
"What exactly?"
"Gate-crashing," Silva said with a smile. Dupoulis stared at the chief, then repeated the unfamiliar phrase. "That's right, Ken," Silva said, "the greatest social transgression of them all—gate-crashing."
Dupoulis leaned back and laughed. When he stopped, he asked, "Did Morrison tell you that?"
"He did in a manner of speaking, and I believe him. The Morrisons' names were added in pencil on the guest list Mrs. O'Donnell gave me. They were invited by the victim when she decided to come up for the weekend, which, by the way, was several days before she called her brother and informed him of her plans. She called the Morrisons during the previous week." Silva opened a file and pulled out the sheet of paper Mrs. O'Donnell had given him.
"Bob Chambers pointed out that Beth knew when Merrilee and Howard usually held a party in the spring and who they probably invited. Beth just got on the telephone—I think he's right about this—after the invitations would have gone out and tracked down someone who got one. After that she probably called around to make sure she'd have friends at the party, someone to talk to, like the Morrisons. The last people she bothered to talk to were the O'Donnells."
"But why be so secretive about it? The Morrisons, I mean." Dupoulis asked.
"The O'Donnells had figured out years ago that one of their guests was telling Beth O'Donnell what the party plans were every spring and the victim used that information to time her congenial visits. Finally annoyed enough to do something about it, the O'Donnells dropped their prime suspects—Mr. and Mrs. Morrison. They may have made a good choice, but the Morrisons certainly weren't the only ones in touch with Beth O'Donnell. So Beth showed up anyway, but first she checked with her friends, the Morrisons, found they were going to be in the area but hadn't been invited, and invited them herself."
"And they just came without an invitation?"
"Of course, they did," Silva replied. "From what I can tell, the point of all this isn't to be friends with the O'Donnells; the point is to be seen at their parties and meet other people. Some of the guests would expect to see the Morrisons, since they've seen them there every year, and others would figure the Morrisons must be worth knowing if they're guests of the O'Donnells."
Dupoulis swore mildly as he listened to this, and Silva chuckled.
"The real point, Sergeant, is that the Morrisons were very embarrassed not to have been invited and so they went when their friend, Beth O'Donnell, invited them. They knew what they were doing, I guess."
"And that's what they were hiding from me when I talked to them?" Dupoulis asked skeptically.
"They were hiding it from each other as much as from you," Silva said. "They didn't want to have to face exactly how badly they had behaved socially, since that seems to be one of their major concerns about other people. As it was, Mr. Morrison blamed his wife and the victim, the 'girls will be girls' kind of explanation," he said, closing the file on his desk. "Saving face can be very important, and some marriages can't go on without their masks."
Dupoulis listened to the last without interruption. "That's pathetic," he concluded. "Well, that's that. So you're ready to cross them off any list of suspects?"
"Yes, unless we find out something else about them," Silva said. "They were friends of Beth O'Donnell and there was no sign of any trouble between them at all. We can come back to them if we learn anything else about them. Right now we have other people we have to look at more closely."
"Okay," Dupoulis said, effectively dismissing the Morrisons from his consideration for the moment. "Are you eliminating anyone else?"
"Yes," Silva said. "So far several people have said that Merrilee O'Donnell was at the front door from ten-thirty to eleven o'clock, and then in the living room until eleven-thirty, relaxing while the caterers cleaned up."
"So she's out of the running if the murder was committed between ten-thirty and eleven-thirty," the sergeant said.
"And then she and her husband say they were together upstairs for the rest of the night."
"And the caterers and Mrs. Miles seem to have no motive and vouch for each other," Dupoulis added.
"Right," Silva said.
"What about Lisa?"
"No one saw any sign that someone went to the cottage from around the house, but that's no reason to exclude her. Right now, we have nothing either way, so we'll just set her aside for a while, but we can't eliminate her entirely."
"So where does that leave us?" Dupoulis asked. "We have the Vintons, the Handels, Bob Chambers, and Mr. O'Donnell, unless the caterers cover all his time after eleven o'clock."
"Right," Silva said.
"Were you thinking of one of those in particular?" he asked, certain the chief did have someone in mind.
"Yes. The Handels, first of all," Silva said. "We need to know a lot more about them."
"You've mentioned them several times, but you still haven't said why," Dupoulis said.
"I'm not sure why myself," Silva commented, "but there is an undercurrent where Lee Handel is concerned."
"You think there's something we're missing about him?"
"Yes," Silva said. "I'm not sure about the details yet, but a little over four years ago, Lee Handel wanted to expand his business. The victim heard him talking about this and told a friend in New York. This man probably presented himself as a venture capitalist with lots of money to spend on businesses like Handel's. The money was just what Handel wanted and it came through someone he could trust, presumably—a friend's sister. The Handels were not likely to know about the problems in the O'Donnell family. And how many people would expect the O'Donnells to know someone disreputable in business? There was no reason for the Handels to suspect anything."
Dupoulis listened impassively and asked, "Just how bad do you think it was?"
"I'm not sure," Silva said, "but the investor called in his loan less than a year after he made it. That left Handel scrambling for money, particularly since he had very little he could use as collateral for another loan without giving up his business entirely."
"They did seem hard up back then," Dupoulis said.
"They almost went broke," Silva went on. "If the grapevine is correct, things were so bad they didn't even go out for a cup of coffee. That's pretty bad for a middle-aged couple that's spent over twenty years building up a business."
"But he never shut down, Chief," Dupoulis pointed out. "He survived."
"That's right. Somehow he survived. And the question is, How much did it cost him?" Silva rifled through his notebook. "The bank manager can tell us more about that," he said as he made a note, "when the time comes."
"Do you think he could hate Beth O'Donnell so much for giving him a bum investor that he would murder her?" Dupoulis asked, trying out this new idea.
"He might. Some people carry a grudge all their lives, just waiting for a chance to get even," Silva said. "Those are the ones who worry me. You never know when they're going to explode in rage."
"He's never seemed like the type to carry a grudge," Dupoulis said, still trying to cast Handel as a murderer in his imagination.
"No one ever seems like the type until they actually do something," Silva pointed out. "Suppose he saw Beth O'Donnell and just seeing her brought it all back, all the struggle, all the frantic calls to find cash to bail him out, all the stress that can break men at his age." Silva knew better than he wanted to admit how Handel must have felt during those times. "Just seeing her could have triggered a return of the worst moments of his life. Or suppose he thought she was about to pull another job on him or on his business."
"Another investor?" Dupoulis asked, starting to take Handel seriously as a suspect.
"No, probably not," Silva said. "This time she might have been more subtle."
"The book," Dupoulis said, and Silva nodded. "I don't get it, Chief. How do you think it would have worked this time?"
"I'm not sure, but suppose Handel saw his editor, Bob Chambers, chasing after a woman whose meddling almost cost him everything," the chief said. "To her it's just a game she plays while she's here, but to Handel it's his life, it's years and years of work."
Dupoulis looked skeptical, but he listened. "He might get desperate," the sergeant finally agreed. "He might think that if he had another bad streak he would really go under. But he's not the only one who could have killed her."
"I agree," Silva said, nodding and brooding in silence for a moment.
"You included Mrs. Handel in your list," Dupoulis said. "So you think it's possible for Mrs. Handel, too."
"Yes, it's possible for her, too."
"That's the one I find the hardest to consider," Dupoulis said. "From what I know of her, she never gets angry about anything. I don't think I've ever even seen her angry."
"You can't rely on what she's been like in the past, or in times we might consider normal. Murder means that someone has been pushed to the edge—and gone over. The murderer, man or woman, may think the murder brought safety, but it didn't. It never does," Silva said philosophically. "And our job is to consider everyone, even the ones who seem impossible as suspects. Hannah Handel is a quiet, reserved woman who went through very hard times with her husband."
"—and never complained," Dupoulis commented.
"Which only makes her less likely to be noticed by the ordinary person. It doesn't make her any less dangerous. The most dangerous person can be the one who never complains. They act."
"And the kids?" the sergeant asked, referring to the two boys who had seen the victim only moments before she went into her cottage.
"They saw two pants legs. That's all," Silva said.
"And Mrs. Handel always wears pants," Dupoulis said.
"Always. Now, suppose Mrs. Handel saw a new threat from the victim," Silva elaborated, "one that could finally destroy her husband financially and personally. What would she do? It was her idea to buy the Marine Press years ago, and she worked hard along with her husband in the early years. Do you think she could watch her life fall apart from the machinations of a woman like Beth O'Donnell and do nothing?"
"And she's a determined person," Dupoulis added. "She would be hard to intimidate."
"Both Mr. and Mrs. Handel had a chance at the end of the party to be alone with the victim, and both had reason to dislike her."
"We could say the same thing about Chambers and Lisa Hunt," Dupoulis went on.
"We could," Silva replied. "Lisa and Mrs. Handel could have very similar motives. And we know Lisa was left alone in the car for almost twenty minutes after the party was over. Right now we're assuming that the man or woman in pants was the murderer. But if we find out otherwise, Lisa will start to look attractive again."
"No one's come forward in the interviews, Chief. No one has admitted going out to the cottage with the victim, even for a second," Dupoulis said.
"Lisa had the opportunity," Dupoulis reasoned, "to go back to the cottage, kill Beth O'Donnell, and return to the car before Chambers got back. The snag there is that she had no idea how long Chambers would be, and she couldn't be sure that the victim had gone back to the cottage."
"What about Chambers? It wouldn't have been as easy for him," Dupoulis said, "but still possible."
"He had the better opportunity," Silva said. "He admits going back to the house and waiting around for almost twenty minutes. And the motive for him gets stronger the more I poke around. Beth O'Donnell did a lot more than lead him on and bruise his ego. She threatened to ruin his career, and for a young man like him that could be—"
However Silva meant to qualify this last comment was lost with the arrival of an officer in the doorway. He handed in a number of letters and announced that Daley was now making coffee, and withdrew. Dupoulis said he'd follow up on what he still had to do and followed the other officer out.
* * * * * *
Daley watched the gas flame flicker under the coffeepot. A large man with an expressionless face, he watched the coffee on most mornings, and pronounced judgment firmly on the day's brew. He disapproved of instant coffee, as well as most commercial brands, and often brought his own ground coffee to the station. He was determined to make connoisseurs of the rest of the force, but it was slow going. They were appreciative but uninformed about the merits of various blends. Even worse, they were uninterested. Nevertheless, the small force had come to expect the aroma of coffee at a few minutes after seven whenever Daley was on the morning shift, and Silva for one was glad of the ritual.
He sorted through his desk in the early hours, and was especially grateful for the time this morning. Talking through the list of suspects with Dupoulis was as much for his own benefit as for his sergeant's, for he was now reaching the stage when he had to add up what he had and define specific hard questions about each suspect. He could hear the scratchy sound of bubbles starting to form and rise in a pot of water set to boiling and let his mind drift comfortably away to his work. He looked over the notes of his conversation with Bob Chambers the night before and made a list of items to check. Then he turned to the autopsy report, which had been in the pile of papers just handed him.
The chief had never learned to tolerate an autopsy, the act of calmly and scientifically dehumanizing the body, and had been glad to find among his men in Mellingham at least one who had no qualms about watching the operation. He was profoundly grateful for Maxwell as he imagined the medical examiner's hands deftly probing the brain mass, or so the report indicated he must have done. Silva moved quickly to the conclusions, nodded in silent agreement, and slipped the report into his desk.
Putting the report out of sight had always made it easier for Silva to speculate on the problems still unresolved after the operation: death was the result of a blow from a blunt object to a part of the skull that Silva knew he would never be able to pronounce. Death occurred between 10:00 p.m. and 3:00 a.m.
Silva recalled to mind a picture of the cottage and the victim slumped in the wing chair, her feet resting on a footstool. She had been still in her evening dress and looked at first glance like any hostess at the end of a party, tired, relaxing for just a minute before going to bed.
"I'll just take this, sir," Maxwell said, breaking into Silva's thoughts and taking his coffee mug. In exchange he dropped a parcel on the chief's desk.
"New York?" Silva asked.
"Yes, sir. Very cooperative and very quick," Maxwell replied. "But nothing on your other questions. If she had any enemies down there, the police can't find them. People didn't especially like her, but there wasn't anything that pointed to murder. They weren't at all unhappy to suggest we keep our murders to ourselves." He grinned as he handed over the thick envelope.
Silva had directed Dupoulis to get the victim's diaries as expeditiously as possible, and had been relieved to have the ready cooperation of Howard O'Donnell and his attorney in New York. But he had been careful not to let his hopes rise for a solution from the journals. Now as he looked over the package of diaries he realized that unconsciously he had let his expectations grow. Silva opened the parcel and counted fifteen volumes covered in fabric with different patterns. Each volume was approximately five and one-half inches by eight and one-half inches, with two hundred pages of good-quality paper.
"I never understood the attraction of these," Silva said. "How about you?" he asked Maxwell, who was standing in the doorway watching.
"There's a course my wife took on using journal writing for—" he paused in midsentence”—for writing," he ended uncertainly. "Well, she took it. Said she liked it." He went back to his desk, leaving Silva with his pile of journals. Silva's youngest sister had once kept a diary: for seven or eight months she carried it with her everywhere. During those months she had peered at, studied, and watched the family, rarely engaging in conversation but always on the edge of the family circle. She had refused to share it with anyone, and was barely willing to acknowledge that she even had the thing in her hand, several times actually sliding it behind her back while her eldest brother stood before her, asking conversationally how it was going. And then, just as suddenly, she had put it aside, and after that she talked at every one of her turns at the dinner table and at every other gathering, a full and eager member of the large, often loud family. The experience had left Silva with what he was willing to admit was an unreasonable suspicion of the writerly instinct.
The chief had requested the journals for the years 1977 to the present. He flipped idly through a few of them. Beth O'Donnell had not made an entry for every day, but she had noted people she had met, letters and pictures received from family and friends, menus from dinner parties, places she had visited, and her income for every month. He settled down to a closer inspection. On the first of every month was written a dollar amount. The amounts varied from month to month, but generally by not more than a few dollars. Howard O'Donnell was a generous man.
He next turned to the volume for the year 1977 and began at January 1. Beth O'Donnell was methodical—a new volume for a new year. He had fifteen volumes, one for each year from 1977 to 1991. That meant, if Beth O'Donnell had held to her pattern, that the journal Mrs. Miles insisted had to be out there in the cottage was for 1992. The coffee perked and Silva read on. He was glad when the coffee finally arrived, as he moved into July. And he was wide awake by the time he reached October. He skimmed forward to February in the following year, and then turned back to reread the winter months.
On the first of each month in this period, the figure for income was followed by a question mark. The figures were about a thousand dollars less than the figures in the early months of 1977. Silva flipped ahead, but there were no more question marks. There were none in the volumes for 1979 or 1980. He made a note of the months and years. Among all the talk and gossip he had listened to, he had never heard any rumors about money problems in the O'Donnell family. Nor had he heard any talk about windfalls. The family had lived consistently and quietly on a certain level for all of his time in Mellingham and for as long as he had heard about from others in the town. It was possible that Howard O'Donnell had had a bad period and had kept it quiet, keeping it from everyone except his sister, who had to know. Silva went back to October 1977 and read to the end of the year. By the end of January 1978 Silva was losing any sympathy he might have felt for the victim. Revealed in her journal, Beth O'Donnell was a whiny, selfish, greedy person.
Silva moved into February 1978. He remembered the storm of that year, and how hard it had been on those who could barely afford heat in the winter. He had been temporarily detailed to Boston then, and remembered it all too well. For some people it had been fun to have a week off with pay. For others it had been a nightmare to have no work while the state shut down under thirty inches of snow. It had become the shibboleth of the New Englander—Where were you in the great storm? No one had expected it, least of all Beth O'Donnell, who had arrived, uninvited as usual, on Monday evening, February 6, 1978. Hers must have been one of the last flights into Logan Airport. And she hadn't made it to Mellingham. Like a lot of travelers and even commuters, she had been caught unprepared for the suddenness and swiftness of the storm. She had been lucky to make it to a hotel in the city; hundreds of commuters had been stranded in their cars on the highways, waiting to be rescued by DPW trucks. The taxi driver who had refused to drive her the thirty miles to Mellingham from the airport knew what was coming. It must have been one of the few times when Beth O'Donnell hadn't been able to buy whatever she wanted.
Beth got as far as the Parkland Hotel, and there she sat—for six days—until Monday, when she apparently managed to get a flight back to New York in the afternoon. Used to getting her own way, Beth had come north determined to see her brother and only the blizzard of the century had been able to stop her. Silva noted that once again, she had come without an invitation and without giving reasonable notice of her intent to her brother and sister-in-law.
Silva turned to the entry for February 6, 1978, the day the snow began, and read through the notes and comments on the hotel. By now, he knew what to expect. Some would call her exacting, demanding; others would call her chronic complaints something else. She liked her room at the hotel, but not some of the staff. She liked some of the guests but not those who had been forced in off the streets by the snow. Silva remembered the frustration of the manager of a small independent hotel who had tried to balance the demands of his guests with the obvious needs of the two derelicts who regularly slept in a nearby alley and had not at all surreptitiously insisted on moving inside. The same dilemma had faced the manager of the Parkland, but Miss O'Donnell made no mention of how the matter was settled. Instead, she recorded in detail the problems with the hotel service, cataloguing every failure of the staff to attend adequately to her needs. After eventually finding congenial companions, she and they had watched from the bar as stranded travelers mingled and meandered through the lobby. Those who reappeared regularly received nicknames, unimaginative but telling. There was Hugo, Ichabod, and Jezebel, and the Kissing Cousin, the Granbabby, and the Stupid Prince.
Mostly Beth had been frustrated at not discovering old friends even here. Each day brought fresh complaints against the hotel, the staff, and the residents of Boston for their deplorable weather. By Thursday she was angry about everything and it showed in every word, though she paused to record that she had seen her beau. She gave not another word to what should have been the most pleasant part of her stay, and Silva decided it was another sarcastic reference.
By late morning, Silva had read to 1983 and was fed up with all keepers of journals. He had concluded, before ten o'clock and his third cup of coffee, that if Beth had a reflective moment, a generous thought, a kind feeling, she hid them all. He couldn't claim to be surprised, and kept on reading. In late spring 1988 she met Lee Handel and made detailed notes about his business, but thereafter, in New York, she made only one reference to him, in a statement that she had mentioned his name to KM. There was no indication of the identity of KM and Silva found no more on this. He reread the relevant passages and then all the months in the period following but still found nothing. It was evident that she didn't personally care for Lee Handel, but there was no overt animosity and no repetition of his name to indicate an obsession. The chief recollected Mrs. Miles's comment that the victim could put someone on the path to trouble even if she didn't walk along with her target, and noted how little interest she had in someone after she had set them up for what she must have known would be trouble. It was as though having put a train of events into motion, she no longer had to wait and watch at each crossing.
Silva moved into spring 1990. In May she had called from New York on a Friday evening and arrived on a Saturday morning. The chief had already noted that in most years her arrival coincided with news from friends near Mellingham that her brother had scheduled a late spring party. There was no mystery to how she managed to arrive for the party without an invitation from her sister-in-law. It was a wonder, Silva thought, that anyone put up with it.
In 1990 she had stayed less than two weeks and had seen as many people as she could. He stopped at the last note on her last day. "No FV. Can't wait." He flipped back to the day of her arrival. Again the last note on Saturday read "No FV." He turned back to 1988, 1986, 1984, 1982, and 1980. There was no other visit in 1978 after the snowstorm. The last volume ended in December 1991.
"A great book, is it? A best-seller?" Dupoulis had come to the doorway and watched the chief read through the last few pages.
Silva sighed from weariness. "Not this one. If this is what she was thinking of selling as a book," Silva shook his head and left the sentence unfinished.
"Some people like that sort of thing," his sergeant said. "They like reading about the rich and famous. And they like knowing them and knowing people who knew them."
"I never knew you had a psychological bent, Dupoulis," Silva said with amusement.
"I don't," Dupoulis said. "I just think people are interesting."
"She doesn't say that much about people," Silva said, still wondering about the value of the diaries. "It reads more like an office diary or a timetable of events."
"You were hoping for a really solid clue?" Dupoulis said. "Maybe an idea about who hated her?"
Silva laughed. "I have to admit, yes, I was hoping for something more. I thought at the least there would be something about one of the suspects, some information we didn't have already. But it really isn't much more than a calendar or a listing."
"My mother used to do that," Dupoulis said. "She used to keep a record of everything she did and everyone she saw so she could remember who to send thank-you notes to, and cards for birthdays and such like."
Silva nodded, now only half-listening as he flipped back through the notebooks.
"Kept it next to her cookbooks," the sergeant continued. "I asked her about it once. Asked her if it was a diary." He looked at Silva briefly, then said, "She said she wasn't foolish enough to keep a diary in the kitchen where everyone could see it and read it. She said it was—" He stopped to think. "Like an—ah—aide-memoir," he said, stumbling over the unfamiliar term. "I think that's what she called it. Anyway, she never forgot a birthday."
Silva stared at his assistant, repeating the term that had unexpectedly fallen from his lips.
"Of course, she did," Silva said to Dupoulis's surprise. "Of course, she did." The sergeant looked hard at the chief, mouthing again the unfamiliar word that had provoked such a strange reaction in him. But Silva was no longer paying attention to him. Intent now on another idea, Silva looked through a few pages, then said, "She refers to some people by nicknames and some by initials. Make a list of all of them and check as many as you can against the guest list for the party." Silva handed over the stack of volumes and then said with a satisfied grin, "I'm going out to lunch." So saying, he stuck his hands in his pockets and sauntered out the door.
* * * * * *
Medge added another photograph to the pile nearest Mr. Campbell, which she had designated the most tasteful selections of the photographs taken at various times of the hotel. When she had first considered Jim Kellogg's offer to join his Kitchen Cast Caterers, she had thought of the freedom to dress in old clothes with no makeup much of the time, present clients with choices rather than a hard-core sales pitch to a senior vice-president, and sit outside on a lovely day like today, if she felt like it. She tried to tell herself that such thoughts were unprofessional, and completely unworthy of someone with her experience and training, but that only made the rhododendron flowers seem larger and whiter and the breeze softer and more sensuous. She reminded herself that this was supposed to be work and poked her finger at the pile of photos closest to Mr. Campbell.
"These are sure to attract a nice clientele," she said.
He nodded and sighed, looking over the golden hair and lightly tanned limbs, thinking how much more effective a photograph of Medge might be. Unfortunately, he thought, as he looked down at four photos spread out in front of him, she seemed to have a penchant for scenery and elderly guests.
"How about some with young people?" he asked.
"Children? I don't think there are any of children," she said, flipping through one pile of photographs.
"I was thinking of older young people," he said hopefully.
"Teenagers?" Medge said aghast. "You want teenagers to advertise your hotel?" She looked around at the subdued elegance of the veranda. "It would change everything."
"I was thinking of even older," Mr. Campbell said, making another futile effort to be understood.
"I'm lost, Mr. Campbell. What young people?"
"Young couples in their twenties and thirties or so," the owner finally said.
"I'm not sure we're a tea-drinking crowd," she said skeptically. "We're more the type for sunset suppers on the roof deck."
"That's it!" Campbell said. "That's perfect." He clapped his hands together. "Sunset suppers! On the roof deck! We'll get double the use out of it. Lots of young couples up there for romantic suppers, champagne under the stars. Wonderful!" he almost shouted.
Medge scribbled ideas as he talked, trying to keep up with the rush of words from a bubbling, excited Mr. Campbell, whose eyes got brighter as he speculated on the receipts his new idea would generate.
"And photographs," he finally said. "Nice young couples leaning against the railing on a terrace with a sunset behind."
The man thinks he's selling the Bahamas, she realized with a shock. "Are you sure about all this?" she asked tentatively, wondering how safe it would be to have a bar on the roof looking over the harbor. She was glad the permits weren't going to be her problem.
"About the dining room," she said, trying to get a grip on the planning again. "The roof is good for afternoon teas as long as the weather is nice—"
"We'll get an awning. That deck will make this place," he said enthusiastically, rubbing his hands together. "Work up some menus. I'll tell the cook we're going to keep the dining room a regular restaurant. This could be great." He jumped up from the table and went off gleefully.
"Great job you're doing," Mr. Campbell said to Jim Kellogg as they passed in the doorway. "Great job!"
Beaming from the unexpected compliment, Jim sat down beside Medge and smiled broadly at her. "He must have really liked what you showed him." He turned to the stack of photographs nearest him and looked through them, hurrying through the pile to the one that must have delighted Mr. Campbell. "Gee," he finally said, "I wouldn't have thought these would have made him quite that happy."
"Actually, it isn't the pictures he liked," Medge began.
"That's good. Some of these are awful," Jim said without looking up. "You need to take lessons, or get someone to come over here to take them. You're a terrible photographer."
"Thanks a lot," she said, not the least bit insulted.
"What did he like?" he asked, finally looking up.
"Nothing of what I tried to sell him." She sighed and said, "He's on to sunset suppers on the roof."
The color slowly drained from Jim's face and when he pulled up his jaw, which had dropped a good four inches, his mouth set in a tight straight line. "Now look, Medge," he said with his teeth clenched. "We agreed. You help with the menus and the brochure. Nothing else. I do the setups. I pick the spots. That was our agreement."
"I know, I know," Medge said in an effort to calm him down. "And I'm really sorry, Jim. Things just got a little out of hand," she said reaching out to pat his arm and soothe her new business partner.
"That roof is no place for regular dining," Jim said.
"He's really hooked on it, Jim," she said, wondering if she should be concerned over how worked up he was getting.
"We'll have to talk him out of it." He pushed away the photographs.
"I don't think we can," Medge said. She scrambled for some of the photographs as they flew to the edge of the table.
"We have to," Jim said, rocking the table on its legs as he jumped up to go after Mr. Campbell.