The water was wild but not too cold. September water, not winter water. Still, we couldn’t stay in it too long before hypothermia would begin having an effect on us. When the waves lifted me, the line linking me to Ivy would tug at me and the wind would hit me, but I would be able to see the glimmer of the West Chop light. Then I’d sink into a trough and again the line would tug, but now I could see nothing.
Somewhere behind us, upwind, the Invictus was taking on a lot of water. I wondered briefly if Alexandro had been hit by the harpoon, and if he could swim. Then I put him out of my mind and concentrated on my own swimming, one armed, downwind through the gathering darkness toward West Chop.
I swam and swam, then rested, exhausted, and let the waves carry me whither they would. I pulled Ivy close to me and tried to tell if she was still alive. But she was wet and cold and I couldn’t be sure. Then I swam some more, wondering if the light was getting closer or whether the wind and tide were going to carry me past the point of land and on down Vineyard Sound until, at last, the cold grip of the sea would carry my warm life away and leave my corpse floating, floating, lashed to Ivy’s. Would I of coral be made? Would I suffer a sea change into something rich and strange?
I rested, then swam, then rested, then swam. My legs were iron, my arm was becoming lead. My eyes were full of salt, my skin was cold. The light seemed no nearer.
I swam and swam and knew I wasn’t going to reach the shore. I hoped Zee wouldn’t be too unhappy. I hoped my children would live good lives and not suffer because they had no father. I wanted to tell them that we all have a death to die and that no one should be too sad when it happens.
But I didn’t want to die. I wanted to see Joshua and Diana and, most of all, Zee. I swam.
And then surf was all around me, with towering, crashing waves and roiling sands, and I was being swept up onto a beach, then carried out, then swept up again. I dug my fingers into the sand and clawed my way forward. A wave carried Ivy up beside me, and I grabbed her life jacket before the next ebbing wave jerked her back into the thundering black surf. A wave crashed down on my back and my face was full of sand and water. I choked and gagged and the surge of water carried me and Ivy high up onto the beach. I got to my knees and was knocked down. I gasped for air and tried to stand. My legs were like water and collapsed under me. I had no strength. I got up onto my knees; I took hold of Ivy’s life jacket with my swimming hand; I backed up the beach. The surf clutched at us, but I went backward until I could go no farther and fell onto the wet sand.
The wind was howling now, and my teeth were chattering, but we were out of the water. Beside me, Ivy lay still as death. I was too weak to carry her. I looked around, trying to see through the darkness. Some sort of shrub was growing there. I tried to untie the line from my waist, but the knot was too much for me. I dug into my pocket and found my knife and got it open with my teeth and cut the line. I rested, then dragged Ivy to the bush and tied her to it so she couldn’t wash away if the water rose too high before I could get back.
I rested some more, until I was afraid that if I stayed longer, I would perish from the cold. Then I willed myself up onto my feet and started inland to find help.
Fortunately, I didn’t have far to go, for some West Chop folk were out looking at the stormy sound. I gave them quite a shock as I staggered into their view, but they were quick to respond. Some went running down to the beach and others picked me up and carried me to a nearby house where they gave me tea and phoned for an ambulance.
I rode to the hospital in Oak Bluffs under a siren and was greeted at the emergency ward by faces I knew pretty well, since most of them had worked there with Zee for years. They asked me questions, examined me, got me into bed, and gave me something that put me to sleep, but not before I told them to call Zee and tell her I was fine.
As I drifted away, I asked about Ivy and was told that she’d been flown to Boston by helicopter just before the real winds began to blow.
When the big winds finally slowed down, I had visitors: Julia Crandel and Jack Harley, both grieving; Lisa Goldman, to tell me that the Invictus had drifted down onto the rocks off West Chop and had broken up on them, and that Alexandro was missing, presumed drowned.
They didn’t let me get out of bed until Hurricane Elmer was only a fading low-pressure system somewhere off to the east of Nova Scotia. Thus, I missed his visit and would have no tales to tell of his mighty winds and high tides, no bragging rights.
I was giving the nurses such a hard time by the time Elmer was gone that it was clear to everyone that I should be thrown out of the hospital. Lisa Goldman came by and picked me up and took me to get my truck, which was parked by the police station, having been driven there by a cop who had picked it up in Alberto Vegas’s driveway.
“And there’s this,” said Lisa, handing me my old .38. “Our gal Peggy found it on Alberto’s dock after she ran down there trying to keep you from being an idiot. You should be more careful with your hardware.”
“I will be.”
“First boat from Woods Hole will be over in an hour. I understand that your family is aboard. You might want to meet them.”
“Wise advice, Officer.”
And I took it.
And after Zee and I were through being lovey and Zee was over the first stages of being furious, we drove home and found a lot of branches down, some screens blown out, and two cats who acted as if nothing had happened, but pointed out that their food dishes were getting pretty low and reminded us that they hadn’t had their afternoon snacks for a while.
It was a fine day, as is often the case when a storm has just passed, and we worked all afternoon cleaning things up and getting straightened away. Then we fed the tots and played with them in the living room, then put them to bed.
We sat on the couch and I told Zee everything that had happened. When I was through, she shook her head. “I’m never going to be able to leave you home alone again, Jefferson!”
It seemed impolitic to tell her that I was glad she and the kids hadn’t been here, since they’d have been just three more things for me to have worried about.
“Yes, dear,” I said. “You’re absolutely right.”
“Don’t ‘yes, dear’ me, Jefferson. You’re just saying that so I won’t know that you’re glad the kids and I weren’t here because we’d just have been three more things for you to worry about!”
Smart Zee. I pulled her closer with my good arm. “Yes, dear. You’re absolutely right.”
“I’ll whack your bad arm if you don’t stop that!”
I nuzzled her. “Yes, dear.”
“You’re hopeless!” She turned toward me. “Oh, am I glad to be back!”
“Me, too. And I’m glad this business is all over.” My lips looked for hers and found them. Kisses sweeter than wine.
Bachelors are fools.
But as it turned out, the business wasn’t quite over.
Pete Warner’s wife didn’t survive her heart attack. A week after they buried her, Pete, wearing a long coat, drove to Alberto Vegas’s house and knocked on the door. When Alberto opened it, Pete emptied two barrels of buckshot into him, then drove to the police station and handed the gun to the kid at the desk.
A week after that, Ben Krane’s office burned down. Arson. No clues.
Zee and I discussed the fire while we fished on East Beach. “Ben was the only one left for Cousin Henry to get at,” I said to her as I reeled in. My left arm still hurt, but you can’t let a little hurt keep you from fishing. “Ben never did anything to the Crandels, but he was tied to the Vegas boys, and I guess that was enough for Henry. It’s sort of like the Lord smiting evildoers unto the umpteenth generation.”
“Yeah. Or a plague on all their houses. Of course, Henry might not have had anything to do with it. A lot of people hate Ben Krane. How do you think a jury will handle Pete Warner?”
“With kid gloves.”
“I think so, too. Hey! Did you see that swirl!” She flipped her rod just a bit to make the lure jump. “There he is again. Hit it, fish!”
The fish tried but missed.
“Drat,” said Zee. “I don’t think Henry would have done anything about it if what happened to Ivy had happened out in L.A., but it happened in OB, where he lives. Remind me never to make Cousin Henry mad at me.”
“No one could possibly be mad at you, sweets,” I said. “Well, blast and drat! Will you look at that! He takes a swipe at my plug and he hits yours!”
Her rod was bent and the fish was a good one.
“That’s my fish!” I shook my fist at the sky. “I’m married to a fish thief!”
“No one could possibly be mad at me, sweets,” said Zee, showing me her snow-white grin. “Just reel in so you don’t tangle my line, and then go up and tend to the kiddies while their mom is busy doing woman’s work.”
I did that and watched her land the biggest blue of the day and the third biggest in the whole Derby as things turned out. But we didn’t know that then.
One thing we did know was that Island of Emeralds, starring Zeolinda Jackson and some other actors and actresses, would have its East Coast premiere on the island just before Christmas. Zee and I and other locals who had helped out when the film had been made were invited, along with various bigwigs and other island denizens deemed worthy of the honor.
Zee could hardly wait. When we’d gotten the news, she’d beamed at her son. “Will I be the face on the cutting-room floor? Or will I be a shining star? Afterwards, will I still speak to a mere mortal such as your dad? What do you think, Joshua?”
“Stay tuned,” I’d said to Diana, feeding her a sip of beer.
The best thing that happened was that Larry Curtis surprised everyone by coming out of his coma with only short-term memory loss. He had no recollection of being beaten and was past the worst of his healing pains before he even knew he needed fixing.
“It’ll take a while, but we expect him to be back on the job before too long,” said Lisa Goldman.
Ivy Holiday was not so lucky. She never woke up and died two weeks after they airlifted her to Boston. Hollywood mourned; her friends mourned; even I mourned, but it didn’t keep me from phoning William Peterson Calhoun and telling him what I thought.
“I can’t prove anything, of course,” I said. “But you might be able to dig up enough to get your man another trial. Get in touch with a PI out there named Peter Brown. He knows a good deal about the case, and he may be able to help you out.”
Calhoun was careful. After all, he couldn’t be sure I wasn’t just setting his client up for a fall. “You think that if we dig into Ivy Holiday’s past, we’ll find a pattern of violence.”
“She was a hothead. She was passionate. She didn’t like to be crossed. She did irrational things. That bare-breasted stunt, for instance. Her first husband hasn’t been seen since they broke up. Her second one fell downstairs and killed himself. Her roommate, who started dating the guy who left Ivy, gets stabbed a dozen times. By your client, they say, but maybe not, because that many cuts strikes me as an act of passion, and he had no passion for the roommate. Ivy’s shrink, the woman she talks to, confesses to, maybe, gets knocked off by somebody who didn’t break into the office. Her fatherly old landlord, who likes to put his hands on the ladies who rent his apartments, gets run over by a car. I think there’s a pattern there, but maybe you don’t. It doesn’t make any difference to me. Ivy’s dead, and I don’t plan on selling my story to the National Planet.”
“What about the letters? Somebody sent them to her.”
“Not your client, according to you. Check out Ivy’s printer or typewriter or whatever she used to write.”
“But why would she keep writing them to herself?”
“You’re the hotshot lawyer. You figure it out. Maybe she wanted to keep people thinking that your boy Mackenzie Reed was still after her, so they wouldn’t have any second thoughts about him being guilty. Or maybe a shrink can explain it. I know one thing: Julia Crandel always seemed more nervous about the letter writer than Ivy did.”
Calhoun was still thinking about all that when I hung up.
In December, Island of Emeralds appeared on the screen of the new theater in Edgartown. The islanders who saw it spent most of their time noticing how a character would walk out of a house in Vineyard Haven and immediately be in a yard in Edgartown; how the hero would get in his car and drive a long distance to the house next door; how cute all the local children were; and how nice the island looked.
Kevin Turner and Kate Ballinger, the nominal stars of the film, were on hand and were interviewed by the Gazette and the Times and by the mainland papers, whose columnists were glad to have an excuse to go down to the Vineyard all expenses paid. The stars were quoted as saying how beautiful the island was and what fine folks the islanders were.
Zeolinda Jackson’s face did not land on the cutting-room floor. During her minute or so on the screen, she spoke her one line and owned the camera. No wonder the Boston Globe interviewed her. No wonder she dazzled the reporter. No wonder the film’s producer predicted that if she wanted a career in Hollywood, she could probably have it.
The wonder was that she didn’t.
“I’m too busy right here,” she said to the Globe reporter. “I’m a nurse, I have two little kids, and I have a husband who gets into trouble whenever I’m gone.”
The reporter turned to me. “And what do you say to your wife about that, Mr. Jackson?”
I had Joshua on one knee and Diana on the other. I bounced them a bit and smiled at their mom. “I say, ‘Yes, dear. You’re absolutely right.’ ”