The tide was going out. Laney’s feet were bare and she left deep heel imprints in the hard sand below the seaweed line on Steps Beach. She was moving in a crab-like crouch, turning over the shells with her hands. Most were slipper shells—a type of snail, she thought, or maybe a limpet. Her grandmother used to call them quarterdeck shells, an old-fashioned name, and said they were invasive. She had offered this judgment with her nose slightly wrinkled, as though the slipper snails threatened her privacy. As a result, Laney valued scallop shells more. They were much rarer on Steps Beach, her prize as she scavenged in the sand, one scallop for every fifty slippers. Most of them were empty, but Laney occasionally found live slipper snails, their shells stacked on top of each other in groups of four or five, like nesting teacups.
Groups of sunbathers were scattered about the beach. It was possible some were even neighbors who had descended their own sets of stairs to stake their claims under marine-blue and citrus-colored umbrellas. But Laney doubted it; she didn’t know Grandpa’s neighbors anymore. His was the last house on Lincoln Circle, right before it became Indian Ave. Many of the other houses on that part of the cliff had changed hands in recent years. Her father never talked about it, but Uncle Elliot was a realtor and he talked about nothing else. The houses were renovated and expanded with full-height concrete foundations that held exercise gyms and wine cellars and media rooms. The gardens were planted and maintained by local landscape companies and encircled with massive hedges. Their owners might be on-island for the Fourth, but they were hidden behind their walls of green, lounging by their pools, their backs turned to the sea.
Her father, she thought, would be much more comfortable in a house like that—one that could be built anywhere—than he was in his childhood home, musty with emotions and memories. But Laney, like the rest of the Murphys, loved Step Above. The house held everything warm and indelible from her childhood.
Andre splashed out of the shallows toward her. His dark skin gleamed with sun and seawater; his surfer shorts were corded neatly over his flat abdomen. Laney registered both his physical beauty and the fact that it had nothing to do with herself. She trusted Andre more than her father or uncle because he was closer to her own age—and he understood how her mind worked. She had been telling him her innermost thoughts for years.
He reached for a towel and ran it over his body. “You okay in Boston?”
“I guess.” Laney dropped her collection of scallop shells back in the sea and let the undertow take them. She dusted grains of sand from her palms. “Although my dad is certifiably weird. Did you know about this sister of his?”
The word aunt seemed impossible.
“Yes,” Andre said.
“You knew she existed.”
“Sure.”
“I didn’t.”
He glanced at her. “Your mom never mentioned Nora? I’m surprised. She wasn’t in the habit of editing your childhood.”
“I know, right?” Laney began to walk beside him, back to the private steps. The sun was hot and she would have liked to go in the water herself, but she needed to discuss this with Andre. “I called her last night. To ask what she knew. I mean, my dad just announces my aunt’s dead without ever telling me there’s an aunt in the first place? WTF?”
“How is Kate?”
“She’s fine. Really good, actually, now that she’s left Boston. She said this Nora person was always trying to turn Grandpa Spence against Dad and Uncle El, so they stopped talking to her.”
“That’s the story I heard.”
“Did El tell you anything else?”
He looked away from her, at the sea. “Just that she was adopted during Spence’s last trip to Laos—that was after his whole hostage period, around 1980. She’s much younger than Elliot and Dave. It sounds like she and the guys just didn’t have much in common.”
“Neither do you and El. I mean—”
She stopped by the bottom of the stairs, her pale skin flushing an ugly red. “You’re younger. And you’re—”
“Black,” he said.
“—so much smarter,” she finished.
After an instant, they both laughed. Andre threw his arm around her shoulder, his palm icy from the sea. They marched deliberately up the stairs. “Have you got any bluefish pâté, Dre?” she asked.
“Have you got any gin, girlfriend?”
“Got any limes?”
“If you’ve got tonic.”
It was an old ritual between them. Laney suddenly felt less orphaned than the day before, less lost than she had in the basement of her father’s brownstone. It was high summer in the place she loved best, and MacTavish might even sleep on her bed that night.
But when they mounted the last flight of steps up the cliff, her father was standing in the rose-covered arch. His flat gray eyes were cold with fury.
Laney stopped short. Andre’s hand dropped from her shoulder.
“What gave you the right,” David asked bitterly, “to invite your mother here, miss?”
Merry pulled into the police station parking lot just as her cell phone trilled. It was the special ringtone she reserved for Peter. She picked up immediately.
“How’d the race go?”
“Fine. Gorgeous day. The police were out in force.”
“Community Service Officers,” she corrected.
“I know. You brought in a boatload of them.” He sounded amused. “I just got a text from Will Starbuck.”
Will was the son of Tess Starbuck, the chef and owner of the Greengage restaurant who was catering Merry and Peter’s wedding. Will was also the stepson of Peter’s farm foreman and close friend, Rafe da Silva.
“Didn’t Will run the 5K with you?”
“Nope. He’s already out at Nobadeer. Along with about a thousand other kids.”
“But it’s only July second!” Merry howled.
“I know. That’s why I’m calling. Looks like the party’s starting early this year.”
Cursing, Merry said a hurried goodbye and almost ran into the police station. As a detective, she wasn’t technically responsible for the extra patrols and checkpoints the Nantucket Police Department had intended to deploy this year to control the holiday chaos, but she thought the uniformed branch would like to know they’d been neatly sidestepped by about two days.
“Thanks for showing up, Detective.”
Pocock was standing just beyond the station’s reception desk, surrounded by a group of Community Service Officers. Most of them were strangers. But Howie was discernible among them, in uniform.
“Yes, sir,” she said—it was her automatic response to Pocock—and she edged neatly around the group. Howie stared unswervingly at the chief.
“Right,” Pocock said. “The Boston Globe decided to publish a piece last night telegraphing our punch. They let the world know we intend to shut down this party on the Fourth, and that we’re deliberately holding fireworks tomorrow, on the third, to avoid being overcommitted on the holiday. So these asinine kids decided to move the target. They brought the party in early, and used social media to do it. We can expect mayhem, on Nobadeer and elsewhere, for the next three days. I want you all deployed at our checkpoints along the access roads, I want orange barrier fences erected between the dunes and the beach, I want six of you stationed at the airport to keep people from walking or driving onto the sand from the tarmac, and I want you to arrest every single asshole you find underage drinking or shitting in the dunes. Understand? You’ll be using disposable plastic handcuffs as restraints, also known as zip ties. You all familiar with them?”
He held up something that looked like a plastic strap for securing baggage tags, double-looped for a pair of wrists. “If we don’t have a couple hundred kids booked tonight, you guys aren’t doing your jobs. Understand?”
There was a chorus of assent from the assembled CSOs.
“—And no drinking what you confiscate,” Pocock added with a touch of sarcasm. “Any officer found to be inebriated will be immediately relieved of his or her duties and sent back to the mainland on the first available ferry.”
Merry hastened toward her office. A gaggle of her colleagues were lingering in the back hallway, watching Pocock marshal the troops. She glimpsed the Potts brothers, department veterans, with their hands in their pockets and sullen expressions on their faces. She felt a brief flare of sympathy. She’d heard they were thinking of quitting.
“Now, line up outside in front of the vans,” the chief barked. “Uniformed Nantucket police will be transporting you to your specific stations. You will be assigned to teams en route, each team reporting to a designated Nantucket police officer throughout the day. Cases of water will be held on the vans for your relief. You can expect to be on duty until at least six o’clock today and much later tomorrow. Dismissed.”
Merry shut her office door and slid into her desk chair with a sigh of relief. Pocock was efficient, no doubt, and he’d nip the Nobadeer bacchanal in the bud—but he was also grim, and joyless, and his whole take on the holiday threatened to rip the sunshine from the summer day. She wondered if he’d even bother to celebrate the Fourth, or crack a smile—much less a beer. However little her father had liked the destructive force of the pop-up beach party in recent years, he’d taken joy in the rest of Nantucket’s July Fourth weekend—because the town’s rituals had been part of his childhood, and Ralph’s, and Merry’s own. That was the difference, she thought, between being born in the community you policed and merely brought in from outside to control it.
For the first time she wondered whether Pocock had cared more for his native Chicago than he did for Nantucket Island—or if every community was the Enemy.
Her desk phone rang.
It was Summer Hughes, from the Cottage Hospital.
“I tried to reach Clarence Strangerfield, but I gather it’s his day off,” the doctor said.
Merry had a sudden image of Clare’s wide bottom suspended over his tomato plants. The forensics chief usually avoided working weekends, and so far Pocock’s disapproval had failed to faze him.
“I was just about to call you, Doctor,” she said. “The Murphy family has okayed the removal of the cadaver to Bourne. You can send it out anytime.”
“That’s good to know. I’ve already heard from them.”
“The Murphys?”
“Bourne,” Summer corrected. “You know that mug we recovered from the roof? Clarence had me overnight it to the Crime Scene Services Section yesterday.”
This was a department of the Massachusetts State Police Crime Lab that processed forensic evidence. If the lab had gotten back to Summer already, there must be news. Merry felt the hairs rise on the back of her neck.
“And?” she said.
“That residue in the bottom of the mug?”
“Coffee?”
“Cut with milk and cyanide,” Summer finished.
Kate Murphy was sitting in Step Above’s faded living room a few feet from her father-in-law, her hand resting lightly on his wrist as though she were taking his pulse. She had once worked as a registered nurse, and old habits died hard. She had pushed her sunglasses to the crown of her head, securing her thick gray hair behind her ears. She wore khaki shorts and a striped summer blouse, the sleeves rolled to her elbows. Her clothes were a trifle limp—the early breeze had dropped and the air was growing heavy with humidity. Kate’s deep blue eyes were bracketed with crow’s-feet. Her nose was sharply aquiline. Marionette lines ran from her nostrils to the corners of her mouth, because she smiled widely and often. She was in her early fifties and comfortable, Andre thought, with the face she had earned.
She rose as he walked into the room, her eyes lighting up.
“Andre! Laney! Come here, baby girl!”
Her daughter swooped to hug her—Kate was six inches shorter—and Andre leaned in to kiss her cheek. He glanced at Spence Murphy as he did so, braced for a rebuke. But the old man’s expression was warm and open.
In his right mind, Andre thought.
“Where’s Elliot?” Spence asked.
“Getting me iced tea,” Kate said. “Do you want any?”
“I’m fine. Have a seat, all of you.” Spence patted the sofa beside him.
Laney sank down, curling her legs beneath her. “Andre’s damp and I’m sandy, Grandpa.”
“Glad to hear it. Maybe you two’ll give me a hand down the steps later on. I never get to the beach these days.”
“Why not?” Kate asked. “Has the weather been bad?”
She had no idea, Andre realized, how vague Spence had become. She’d arrived on one of his good days.
“Too shaky,” Spence said. “Those rails need repair. Can’t trust ’em.”
“Maybe David and El can help. While they’re here.”
“Neither of them can drive a hammer,” Spence said dismissively.
“I can,” Andre offered.
The old man’s eyes crinkled with amusement. “Of course. You’re the son I never had.”
That was the familiar Spence: embracing and easy. But he could not be trusted to remain; he would slip away like a ghost as exhaustion crept up on his mind. Andre felt a spiritual pain, aware of the personality they were losing. Had already lost.
Elliot appeared with the iced tea.
“Where’s David?” he asked Andre under his breath as he took a chair beside him.
“On the back lawn.”
“Hyperventilating?”
“Exactly.”
Andre sipped the tea. It had been steeped with loose Darjeeling and fresh mint Elliot bought from a market in the East Village. It tasted like liquid mahogany.
“You’re good to find a room for me, El,” Kate was saying. “I realize it was short notice.”
“I’m so glad you came,” Laney said, “even if Daddy’s furious at me.”
“Is he?” her mother replied. “Whatever for?”
“Because you aren’t welcome here, Kate,” David said.
He was observing them from the safe distance of the center hall, which meant he had avoided the obvious path to the living room from the deck. As though he needed to sneak up on them, Andre thought—as though a normal approach would leave him too exposed.
“That’s no reason to take it out on Laney,” Kate said mildly.
He ignored this. “I would like you to leave as soon as possible.”
“Nonsense,” Spence said testily. “She’s only just arrived.”
“Dad.” David’s voice was very quiet. “She’s not my wife anymore. She left me. She left Laney. She has no right—”
“To exist?” he retorted. “Good God, you’re like your mother, David. You can’t let go of a wound, can you? Just keep pulling off the scab, over and over, so it never heals. Kate is my guest. She can stay as long as she likes.”
He placed his hand over his daughter-in-law’s and squeezed it briefly. “You were the only one who liked Nora anyway,” he said. “I’m glad you’ll be here for the funeral.”
There was a tense silence. Andre saw David’s face suffuse with color, then fade to dead white. Anger, violently suppressed. It could not be healthy for a man to suppress so much.
They all listened as he mounted the worn stairs, one foot deliberately in front of the other.
“Then that’s settled,” Kate said. “Shall I just share Laney’s room? And how about some lunch?”