Spencer Murphy’s Volvo was in fairly good condition for a car that had been exposed to salt air for fifteen years. Merry walked around it, noting scratches along both the driver and passenger sides—probably from the untrimmed hedges that lined the entry to Step Above—and a shallow impression in the bumper near the tailpipe. He’d backed into something fairly recently. The car was parked in a shaded spot along New Whale Street and there was a ticket on the windshield. It was a two-hour zone, and Murphy’s car had overstayed its welcome by about six. Murphy himself was nowhere to be seen.
“This is a good place to dump your car if you’re catching a ferry to the mainland,” Howie pointed out.
“If you want a parking ticket on July Fourth weekend.” Merry pulled on a latex glove and tried the door handle; unlocked. She glanced inside. A stained coffee mug, a couple of used tissues wadded in the cupholder, and a yellow reporter’s notebook tucked on the passenger seat. She flipped it open carefully in case Murphy had left a note. But in page after page of jottings, there was a common thread: he recorded bird sightings, some of them with charming pencil sketches; and he wrote careful instructions to himself, organized by day. Lists of things he needed from the store. Reminders to call people, meet people, remember their names. She had stumbled on Spencer Murphy’s vast cheat sheet. He knew he was losing his memory, and he was fighting it.
Under today’s date there was only one notation:
Wharf Rats, noon.
“You think he realized we’d figured out he killed his daughter and skipped town?” Howie asked.
“No. I think he’s old and lost. Go back to my car and put out a second APB—with just Murphy’s description this time. He’s probably wandering on foot. Unless he somehow made it home.”
She drew her cell phone from her purse and called Clarence Strangerfield. She buzzed him twice before he picked up.
“Hey. Are you done at the house?”
“Half an hour ago,” Clarence said cautiously. There was the sound of laughter and a shrieking child in the background.
“Where are you?”
“Something Natural. I was a bit puckish, Marradith, and the cheese-and-chutney on whole grain was calling me.”
“Pocock will be calling you next. He wants us to eat at our desks. Find anything after I left?”
“Lots. There are over a dozen rooms in that house. And only one woman to clean them. You don’t want to know what’s undah the beds.”
“Controlled substances, Clare,” she said patiently. “Prescription or non. Did you get anything?”
“Just a hahf-empty bottle of a common statin med. Spencer Murphy has high cholesterol, appahrently.”
“Is that something we should ask the coroner to test for?”
“It wouldn’t kill the girl, Marradith, unless she’d eaten the whole bottle. And even then, it would take a while. She’d die of livah failure over a period of days. Not while she was watching the sunrise.”
“Tell the folks in Bourne about it, just the same.”
“Ahready did,” Clarence said comfortably. “Did you find her father?”
“No. He didn’t wander home on foot?”
“He did naht.”
“How much of your sandwich is left?”
“I only got a hahf. You know how large they are.”
“Can you meet me on New Whale Street, Clarence?”
Andre lifted the glasses from the living room table and carried them across the center hall to the side passage that led to the kitchen. Like those in most old, unrenovated houses, it was a small galley space with few windows, a dark linoleum floor, and wood cabinets scuffed with use. The few pots and pans Roseline used to cook the simple meals she gave Spencer Murphy were shining and clean, but they dated to the 1970s. So did the dishes. Even the pot holders by the electric range were gray with time and use.
Andre knew that if Elliot had his way, the room would be tripled in size by folding it into the connecting passage and adjacent study. It would be opened to the rear terrace and filled with light. The cabinets would be white, the floors flagged with limestone, which suited a house by the sea. Elliot would dot the room with his collection of sea-colored glass vessels, handblown by artist friends. He would cook healthy food on a gas stove under a vent hood encased in stainless steel. The room would strike a razor-edge balance between comforting nostalgia and hip modernity.
Andre was less obsessed with places and things than his partner. He spent his days with people who had so little that his own life seemed inordinately blessed. He was a psychologist who worked with homeless children at shelters in the Bronx. He and Elliot had met at a Designer Show House in Brooklyn; proceeds from the event benefited Andre’s organization. Elliot had toured him through the place, his enthusiasm for design infectious; it was a window on his skills as a high-end Manhattan realtor. Andre had turned the tables, however, by asking Elliot to help find low-cost buildings in fringe areas that his organization could refurbish and lease. In the past seven years, he and Andre had turned around eight buildings as fresh new shelters for abused women and homeless kids. In the process, they had become friends, lovers, and partners in every sense of the word. Their condo perched above the High Line was an oasis of calm from the stress of both their lives.
He rinsed the empty glasses, soaped them carefully—they were Elliot’s mother’s old Waterford highballs—and upended them in a rack to dry. He knew Elliot was outside, standing in the long grass at the end of the garden, staring at the darkening Sound.
Roseline had gone home. Spencer Murphy had not returned. They were alone in the house. With Nora’s ghost.
He walked through the hazy, unlit rooms to the French doors and strode across the lawn.
“They found the car,” Elliot said. “But not Dad. I just heard.”
“They’re still looking?”
“Oh, yeah. What if he got on a boat? And ended up in Hyannis? With no idea why he was there—or where there was—or how to get back?”
“He’d ask somebody,” Andre said. He put his arms around Elliot’s waist and drew him close. Elliot’s head came up to his chin, no higher, like a child’s. Elliot sighed, also like a child, and leaned into Andre.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “That this happened. It’s ruined our holiday.”
“We could go eat,” Andre suggested reasonably.
“How can I eat, when my father’s . . . out there, somewhere, and Nora’s . . .”
“You’re not helping Spence by standing here.”
Elliot gazed out over the moor shrubs and wild brush that tangled the gulley between the cliff and the farther dunes. “What if he’s . . . down there, Andre? A corpse like Nora? Covered by the leaves and the vines and the rugosa canes . . . lying under the stairs . . .”
“MacTavish would have found him.” Andre released Elliot. “Tav didn’t smell a thing but seaweed and dead crabs. And he’s already had his dinner and gone to sleep on our bed. Now, come on, El. You’re making yourself crazy here.”
“I can’t eat until I call David,” he said.
Laney Murphy slipped an electrolyte supplement into her water bottle and waited for it to dissolve, shaking it gently, while she unrolled her yoga mat and draped it over her shower door to dry. The basement apartment of her father’s old brownstone on Beacon Hill was low-ceilinged and dimly lit, but the bathroom, like the rest of the space, was recently renovated and shone with a marble chill. David Murphy was fastidious. He’d won their longtime cleaning lady when he’d divorced Laney’s mother and doubled the woman’s working hours. Since moving back in with her dad four months before, Laney had learned to keep her chaotic life shut tightly in her bedroom. She never left a stray flip-flop or hair band anywhere in the rooms upstairs, which her father had arranged like a museum: discreet picture lights beaming gently on the framed art that lined the walls, chairs precisely positioned around low tables boasting a single potted succulent, a single magazine. There was nothing at all on the long, pale gray quartz kitchen counters. Curious, Laney had opened the oven door one night after her father was safely in bed, and scanned the inside. Just as she thought: it had never been used. He had torn out the old kitchen when her mother left, replaced everything down to the last spoon, and then metaphorically turned off the lights. The house seemed sterile without the odors of garlic and lemon, rosemary and lamb, chocolate and raspberry. The only thing David ever made was coffee, in a gleaming new machine piped into the wall that ground its own beans and steamed its own milk. Laney had not yet mastered it and never would; she preferred green tea.
She pulled a sweatshirt over her head, thrust her feet into a pair of sheepskin-lined slippers, and ran lightly up the stairs to the empty kitchen. It was half-lit, like the rest of the rooms, when most of the gorgeous old houses on Charles Street were glowing with lamplight and conviviality. The drinks hour, Mom always called it, as she poured herself a glass of wine and scooped a handful of cashews from the pantry. The ritual signaled the end of the work or school day when Laney was little, the shift to indoor warmth and comfort after the grittiness of daily life in Boston, like throwing a match on the fire in winter or slipping into a hot bath when her muscles ached. Comfort had leached out of her father’s house when Mom left. Laney thought of her now, pouring a similar drink, probably, in her studio in Brooklyn—but alone. Or maybe not: Mom had a genius for making friends. Maybe she was sitting with one at a tiny table in a trendy neighborhood bar, her gray hair sliding from behind her ears, laughing.
She had invited Laney to move in with her when the teaching job had turned out to be unbearable and her work as a yoga instructor failed to pay the rent. But Laney knew how small the studio was. She’d be sleeping on a pullout couch and folding it back up every morning. There was nowhere to store her clothes. She’d have no privacy. Neither would Mom. She winced at the thought of her mother bringing a stranger back to her bed at night—that was totally mind-blowing and uncomfortable to envision—but all the same, she didn’t want to invade Mom’s freedom. Kate had spent enough years taking care of Laney as it was. And then there was Dad—
Dad, who had retreated even further into himself now that Mom was gone. Whose fluorescent pallor, under his close-cut cap of silver hair, suggested a life lived behind bars.
She opened the refrigerator door; the empty whiteness stared back at her. Scrupulously clean shelves. A stick of butter and a bottle of dressing on the door, a bag of coffee beans, three limes, and a liter of vodka. Yesterday’s paper carton of Thai takeout sat in splendid isolation on the top glass shelf. She opened the vegetable drawer and drew out the baby greens and avocado, the block of Parmesan and the quinoa she’d bought a few days ago. Hesitant to violate the oven with fat-splattering protein, she lived on salad now. And the occasional pizza Rory gave her when she slept over at his place.
She grated the Parmesan with a vegetable peeler, drizzled the greens with champagne vinaigrette, and cubed the avocado. The quinoa had currants in it. She opened a can of water-packed tuna and flaked it carefully with a fork over the salad, then rinsed the can so it wouldn’t smell in the trash and offend her father. Before she left the kitchen, she wiped the counter clean. Laney’s whole life was a tug-of-war between her mother’s rich appetites and her dad’s asceticism.
There was a light under his office door; working late again. No sound of keyboard or soft rumble of conversation, however. No TV. She grasped her metal bowl in one hand and padded in her slippers down the hall. Hesitating for a fraction of a second, she rapped her knuckles against the mahogany door. It was ajar. When he didn’t answer, she opened it slightly and inserted just the right half of her face into the room.
Her father was staring straight ahead, one arm of his reading glasses dangling from the corner of his mouth. His eyes shifted slowly to hers, but no expression crossed his face, no hint of welcome or even recognition. After a second, he said: “Sit down.”
She came around the door and slid quietly into the chair in front of his desk. She set her salad bowl on the floor beside her. “You okay?”
“I’m fine. Your aunt has been found dead in the Nantucket house and your grandfather is missing. Can you take a few days off?”
“From the studio? Of course, but—”
“Elliot has asked me to come. There will have to be a funeral.”
“For Grandpa Spence?” she stuttered, bewildered.
“For your aunt. Pack for three days. We’ll leave for Logan at eight a.m. Don’t oversleep.”
He rose from his desk and walked out of the room without another word.
Laney listened to him mount the stairs to the upper floor, the rooms she never entered now. Her heart was beating wildly. The smell of tuna drifted to her nostrils, bringing bile into her throat.
“What aunt?” she whispered.
Jodie Jameson stepped out the back service door of American Seasons and dipped his cigarette to the match flaring between his hands. Then he lifted his head and let a spiral of smoke drift into the night air. It had been humid earlier, the restaurant kitchen like a frantic sauna, all the line workers shining with sweat, but now there was a slight wind rippling through the streets of Nantucket. Jodie glimpsed a few stars. A few clouds scudded over the moon. The weather was shifting. It would be bright and clear tomorrow.
The restaurant had fronted Centre Street for decades, but here at the rear of the building, all was deep night, the darkness beneath sheltering tree branches, and relative quiet. Jodie was sous-chef at American Seasons. Regulars had booked their tables months ago for this first night of July Fourth weekend and he was feeling the effects of a long day. He pulled out his phone and glanced at the time: twelve minutes past ten. Table service was done, but the bar would be open another two hours. His thirty-second break was over. He inhaled deeply and dropped his smoke beneath his kitchen clog.
Which was when the old man’s face suddenly loomed out of the trees, wavering as he shuffled toward Jodie. The cook squinted, peering beyond the back-door spotlight. “Can I help you?”
“The jungle’s too quiet. They’re waiting with their knives.” Spence Murphy held out his cigarette. “Gotta light, soldier?”