It had been a long time since David Murphy had handwritten a personal note. The pen felt awkward in his hand, his fingers cramped. But his laptop was useless now; his father had never adjusted to computers, so there was no printer in Spence’s office. David could have placed the sheet of paper in the ancient typewriter and tapped out the words, but he would probably have riddled the text with typos. He wanted his final communication to be error-free. And there was an intimacy—an authenticity—to handwriting. No one would question that David had authored his farewell.
It was only a few sentences long; all his life he had been concise and efficient. When he had signed and dated it, he sighed, rubbed his eyes, and left it propped on the typewriter. Just like the note his father had supposedly left.
The detective would note the similarity in method, of course. It would feed her assumptions, echo her theory. David took comfort from that.
He did not look back as he left the den, and he did not close the door.
Step Above was completely quiet.
He strode purposefully to the kitchen and opened the cupboard. The bag of bitter apricot seeds still sat, half-empty, on the shelf.
David began to make coffee.
Merry found Kate Murphy sitting in the middle of the airport at Ackerman Field, waiting for the 2:48 Cape Air flight to White Plains. Nantucket’s terminal was, relatively speaking, tiny. There was only one gate—a door leading out to the windy tarmac—and an old-fashioned stainless steel bin with louvered doors set into the wall, where baggage handlers dropped bags as carelessly as fast-food burgers. This was locally known as the “Arrivals Area.” At the Departures end of the terminal, the security scan was set up immediately in front of the exit door. There was no maze for passengers to navigate; few flights out of Nantucket were large enough to require them. The rest of the terminal consisted of a couple of airline ticket counters, a pair of rental car agencies, a place to buy coffee, and a kiosk that sold postcards and water and T-shirts with whales on them.
Also, an ATM.
There were a number of flights to White Plains each day, but on a Tuesday immediately following Fourth of July weekend, Merry’s desperate hope was that they were booked, and Kate Murphy would be forced to cool her heels. She left her police SUV brazenly in the tow-away zone in front of the terminal (it was only two cars long), and her hope was rewarded. She spotted Kate as soon as she walked through the entrance.
“Just the person I wanted to see,” she said affably as she took the chair next to Kate’s. “Your daughter told me you were here. She’s a little worried about you. She packed up your stuff before I left Step Above so I could bring it to you.”
Merry set Kate’s suitcase at her feet.
“I’m sorry,” the woman blurted out. “I couldn’t face them. David and Elliot. Even Laney. All those questions—”
“I can imagine. Your lawyer explained the trust to me this morning. Congratulations. You’ll have a salary to count on, now. When’s your flight?”
Kate told her.
“Well, that would have been nice,” Merry sighed. “To be back in New York for dinner. But you realize you’re fleeing an active murder investigation? One in which you’re . . . actually a suspect?”
Kate stared at her woodenly.
“I’m going to have to forbid you to leave Nantucket,” Merry said regretfully. “I can probably arrange for you to get a refund—the Cape Air folks are old friends. In the meantime, would you answer some questions?”
“Right here?”
Merry glanced around. “This has to be preferable to going back to Step Above, right? At least you can be honest. None of your family is listening.”
“Of course. What do you want to know?” Kate asked.
“I’d like your comment on something, first.” Merry pulled her cell phone out of her purse and opened her email. “One of my assistants sent me notes about your divorce settlement. I gather you left your husband under something of a cloud. You had an affair, isn’t that right? With one of your daughter’s college friends?”
Kate frowned. “How did you know that?”
“Divorce papers,” Merry said briefly. “Public record. David used that to screw you to the wall. He didn’t have to divide his property, and because Laney’s of age, he didn’t have to pay child support. You received a settlement of two hundred thousand dollars—which, while nothing to sneeze at, is hardly what you might have expected from a man of David’s supposed worth. You’re renting your studio in Brooklyn, which isn’t known for its economical rents, and you’ve yet to find a job.”
“That’s true.”
“So this appointment you got today is something of a godsend. Did you know Spence had put you in charge of this trust?”
Kate shook her head. “I didn’t even know there was a trust. Or a new will. I was completely surprised.”
“Well,” Merry temporized. “Not completely. You’d met Nora months ago. You knew she was going to propose something like this to her father. But you didn’t know whether she’d had the chance to make it happen before she died. That’s why you flew in here Saturday, isn’t it? After Laney called to say that an aunt she’d never heard of had been found dead on Spence’s roof walk?”
Kate frowned. “I flew here to support my daughter.”
“That was a nice side-benefit, yes. When did you first see Nora in New York?”
Kate hesitated.
“Please don’t lie out of a false instinct for self-preservation,” Merry suggested. “The truth is easier to remember. That’s important in a murder investigation.”
“Nora contacted me in late January,” Kate said. “She was flying in to talk to editors, and she’d realized from Facebook that I had left—that I had divorced David.”
“Ah. I don’t have her Facebook login. So I couldn’t access her Friends list or posts or messages. I was able to read her email, however.”
Kate glanced at her swiftly. “You have Nora’s laptop?”
“And her cell phone. Which is why I suggested you be as frank as possible from the get-go. I didn’t realize, initially, that you were in contact with Nora right up to her death until I went back through her inbox this morning.”
Kate’s jaw clenched. It was a habit from years of suppressing comments she might have made to David in anger.
“Nora told you in late May that she’d arrived here, but she never emailed about her meeting with Alice, or her success in arranging the trust,” Merry continued. “Didn’t you wonder why she failed to answer your last message? Or the two messages you sent after that?”
“Of course. I tried her cell,” Kate said. “But she didn’t pick up. It went straight to voicemail.”
“Must have made you nervous.”
Kate shot her a quick glance. “A little. I wondered . . .”
“. . . If she was cutting you off?”
“I thought maybe David had found out she was here.” Kate’s voice trailed away.
“Or maybe, that Andre had told Elliot everything,” Merry suggested. “Not just that Nora was back in the States, but that he’d been counseling her to set up a trust. And Elliot could have alerted David. David could have flown to the island—”
“You know about Andre?”
“He came to see me this morning. He told me he’d been counseling Nora to channel her anger in useful ways. Confession is good for the soul. So as soon as you realized Nora was dead, you had to fly here. And see what was happening for yourself.”
“It was so weird to hear she was lying up there, on the roof all those weeks,” Kate said faintly. “I thought maybe Spence had snapped when she confronted him. That he couldn’t deal with the threat of Nora’s exposure. There was no other reason for why she’d died. She certainly seemed healthy. She was the farthest thing from suicidal. But when I got here, Spence was anything but angry. He was glad to see me. And then it was obvious the whole thing was an accident. He’d just mixed up the coffee beans and the apricot seeds—”
“You came because you needed to watch David, too,” Merry added implacably. “You couldn’t let David find out about the new will from a talkative Spence, and turn the whole situation around.”
“I overreacted,” Kate admitted. “Within hours of arriving, I realized Spence’s mind was failing. He never mentioned Nora or her book. He’d forgotten she was ever there. He kept forgetting she was dead.”
“Until Sunday night, right before dinner.”
Kate looked confused.
“I mentioned that Laney was worried about you,” Merry reminded her. “She’s worried, specifically, that you somehow killed her aunt. An hour ago she told me that Sunday night, the night before he was murdered, Spence was talking more than usual. He’d had a drink and his mind was wandering. He was in one of his semi-lucid periods, in fact. He told Laney that Nora was going to write a book about the truth—but that you’d taken care of the problem. Or words to that effect.”
“She said that?” Kate demanded.
“Yes. Laney saw you dump Spence’s drink in the grass. She thought you were trying to silence him. It worried her enough that she persuaded you to take a walk along the beach with her before the fireworks so she could talk to you alone. Did she bring up Spence’s ramblings?”
“Yes,” Kate admitted. “I told her that her grandfather didn’t know what he was saying anymore, but of course he hadn’t meant that I’d killed Nora.”
“He meant that with you running the trust, Nora was giving up on her book. But you couldn’t mention the trust to Laney.”
“No. Spence might have lived for years. It was utterly inappropriate to bring up his will before his death.”
“And dangerous—you didn’t want Laney to tell David about the trust. Spence might be dangerous, too, if he spilled the beans to either of the Murphy boys when you weren’t looking. But you couldn’t watch him all the time. You’d have to leave Nantucket at some point. Is that why you were such an advocate for moving Spence into full-time trained nursing care? On the mainland? In a professional facility?”
“I’m a former nurse,” Kate lashed out. “I advocated for what was best for Spence.”
“And urged Laney to consider moving in with him if David balked at a transfer to Boston or New York. That way, no one would wonder why you flew to Nantucket periodically to visit them. Laney wouldn’t be much of a shield between Spence and David, but she’d be better than leaving Spence in the hands of people only David hired and paid. If Spence rambled more as he declined, David might learn from his paid caregivers about the new will. And take steps to persuade Spence to nullify it.”
“That’s a negative construction to put on what was a sincere wish for Spence’s well-being,” Kate retorted. “And why do you care about all of this, anyway? None of it matters, now. Spence is gone. David learned about the will today from the best possible source—his father’s lawyer.”
“What a relief,” Merry said softly. “Is that why you killed him, Sunday night? To make sure he never talked again?”
Before Kate could speak, Merry’s cell phone rang. She glanced at the screen. It was Clarence.
She took the call. And then said to Kate: “I’m going to have to ask you to return with me to Step Above.”
She met Clarence where Lincoln Ave branched into Lincoln Circle, just south of the Murphy house, in front of a massive roll-off dumpster and a construction site. Laney was standing there; Merry had texted the girl to wait for them with the evidence team.
She and Kate got out of the police SUV.
“Mom,” Laney said tearfully, and Kate went to her.
“I’m sorry, baby girl. I haven’t been thinking clearly.”
Merry was examining the treasures Nat Coffin had unearthed. The shovel was already encased in plastic. She turned to the two women. “Could I have your attention for a moment?” she asked. “Do either of you recognize these as belonging to Step Above?”
“Oh, yeah.” Laney came forward. “I already looked at them while I was waiting for you and Mom. That’s our shovel and wheelbarrow. It’s so weird that you guys found them in the dumpster. Who’d throw away a perfectly good wheelbarrow? It had compost in it, too.”
“When did you last see it, Laney?” Merry asked. She was concentrating on excluding Kate Murphy, so that the mother could not suppress the daughter’s information.
“Sunday night. I put all the garden bags in Grandpa’s car—I was going to drive them to the dump. Mom wanted to mulch the hydrangeas the next morning, but we never got to it because of Grandpa.” She glanced at Nat Coffin, who was still standing in the dumpster. “Is there compost in there, too?”
“Hard to tell. Dirt’s the norm, not the exception.”
“Can you show me exactly where you left the wheelbarrow Sunday night, Laney?” Merry broke in.
“Sure,” she said. “Mom?”
Without another word, Merry drove them both back to Step Above. Clarence waited for Nat to climb out of the roll-off, and followed in his evidence van.
When they arrived, Laney led them around the far side of the house. “That’s Nana’s compost pile,” she said, pointing to the unruly heap of garden refuse decaying serenely under a beech tree. “You can see where I dug up the load from the bottom. I rolled the wheelbarrow around this side of the house to the backyard.”
Merry and the others followed her along a path beaten into the turf, around the sagging wooden deck with its double sets of French doors—from Spence’s bedroom and the living room—and the single door off the kitchen, near the barbecue. Laney was standing next to the semi-circular perennial beds filled with hydrangeas, punctuated in its middle by the rose trellis gate and plunge of beach steps. “I left the wheelbarrow right here. You can actually see where the metal supports sank into the turf. We’d watered the beds with a sprinkler at the end of the day, because we didn’t know it was supposed to rain, and the wheelbarrow was heavy with compost.”
“Was it still here after dinner?”
Laney nodded. “I almost tripped over it in the dark, after the fireworks.”
“What about when you did yoga the next morning?”
Laney moved obediently to the spot where she must have spread her yoga mat, and stared at the perennial bed. After an instant she said, “It wasn’t there.”
“You’re sure?”
“Positive. I remember thinking how nice Nana’s coreopsis and phlox looked, now that the weeds were gone.”
“Thank you for noticing, my dear,” Kate said under her breath.
“And the wheelbarrow would have blocked my view of that clump,” Laney finished, “where the two plants are grouped together.”
“Thanks.” Merry scanned the depressions in the ground where the wheelbarrow had rested. Both marks had visible divots—caused, she suspected, by shifting the heavy barrow out of the soft earth. Her face barely a foot above the ground, she made out the faint marks of a rubber wheel trailing through the unkempt grass. It was helpful that no one had mown it.
The trace disappeared at the trellis gate; of course, Merry thought—the entire world had been up and down those stairs in the thirty-six hours since Spencer Murphy’s body was found at the bottom. Andre had gone down with the dog; the EMTs had gone down with a stretcher; Clarence and his boys had examined the treads and railings . . . and now steady rain had washed the stairs clean. She peered over the railing at each side. Then she reached down and grasped a fistful of soil.
“Does this look like your compost?” she asked as she walked back to Laney.
“Yeah. It’s got that great, good-dirt smell,” she said, putting her nose into Merry’s palm.
“It was dumped down the cliff, to the left of the top step.”
Laney frowned. “That’s stupid.”
Merry didn’t bother to correct her. Kate wasn’t even aware of them. She had turned her head, every fiber of her being listening; and Merry became aware that a small dog was howling somewhere close at hand.
And then she saw.
Andre was walking toward them across the lawn, with a single sheet of paper in his hand.