CHAPTER TWO

Tagliabue sighted the island not an hour after the fiery red sun had lifted off the horizon. His eyes were gritty and salt in the air made his skin feel tight against his face. Westfarrow was a substantial coastal land mass situated some fifty nautical miles from the mainland, usually a five-hour transit at Maven’s cruising speed. It seemed as if he’d been at sea for weeks this time, he was that wrung out. The trip hadn’t taken too much longer than a normal passage; it was the stress from the damage and being alone the whole time. He shook his head and pressed the mic button.

“Westfarrow, Westfarrow. I’m approaching your location. Over.”

Seconds passed.

“Yes. I can just make you out in my glass. We’re ready. Over.”

He could sense the relief in her voice. He wanted to reassure her, reinforce her feeling of relief, but piloting the boat singlehanded meant concentration. Agnes Ann knew that and kept her radio talk brief. She advised him that the tide had just turned and was still nearly full. He could see the outboard floating peacefully at the right side of the pier; he made for the left side.

He came into the dock at Westfarrow slowly and reversed the engines, twin screws churning the still water to a creamy head. Agnes Ann and her son tied him off. Tagliabue swung out to the worn dock and shook hands with both of them. Their hands were smooth, leathery even. Lines radiating from the sides of the woman’s eyes caught the new-slanted sun as she smiled at Tagliabue. Her barn coat couldn’t conceal her slender leggy body, at least not to his mind’s eye. She wore a wool cap, like the one Joshua was wearing when he died. Brown hair straggled out from the back of it and lay flat against her neck. The boy, Jesse, tall as his mother at sixteen, was already looking in Maven, ready to begin unloading her cargo.

“How many bales you got, Mr. T?” he asked.

“Forty. Two hundred fifty dollars, total.”

He mentioned the cost because he didn’t want Agnes Ann to have to ask. She said she’d get her checkbook, but he suggested they unload first and lay the Maven on the shingle beach. She agreed, knowing the boy was ready to get this early work done before he fed and watered the animals. He already had driven the flatbed to the dock. Tagliabue didn’t want to break the news about Joshua to Agnes Ann in front of Jesse; he felt it was a mother’s choice when and how to break bad news to her child, so he said nothing about the body in the cabin as he rigged the winch and started hoisting the bales ashore. Mother and son moved them into stacks on the back of the truck.

“Phew, are these bales extra heavy or am I just getting old before my time?”

“They’re heavy, Mom. It’s a good sign, means they’re packed tight so we get more hay in each one.”

She smiled in admiration at her son’s growing maturity as she drew in deep breaths and shucked her jacket. Tagliabue tried not to look at her body. In less than a half hour they were finished. Tagliabue retrieved a heavy line Jesse had rigged to a tree. He tied it off to a bollard on the bow of Maven and started the port engine. He backed her away slowly from the dock. He dropped an anchor over the stern and eased the boat forward as Jesse took up the slack in the hawser until the boat ran aground. Steadying her with the engines, Tagliabue tightened the aft anchor line and heaved a rope ladder over the side. He killed the engines and climbed down. They left the boat like that, tied off forward and anchored astern.

Agnes Ann said. “You’ll soon be stranded on the beach, Tony. You’ll have three or four hours before you can refloat her.”

“That should give me enough time.”

“Us.”

“How’s that, lady?”

“Us. I’ll be helping you with repairs.”

Tagliabue nodded as Jesse drove off to unload in the barn. He would do that himself while his mother and her friend had coffee in the kitchen. They walked up the dirt path to the house. The island hadn’t seen rain for five days so the ground was loose. They went through the blue door to the kitchen, the man leaving his boots in the mudroom and ducking under the lintel. Agnes Ann pushed the button on a Bunn. They sat at an enameled table.

“The hay smelled good. What kind were you able to get?”

“Fescue and timothy mix.”

“Oh, that’s perfect. Decent price too after last week’s warm spell. That should do us for a while.”

“Yeah. We’ll be getting spring grass next time we need to load up,” Tagliabue said.

“If there is a next time.”

He looked at her. “You thinking you might stay on the mainland for the season?”

“Well, you know . . .” She reddened a touch. “Francine could do well at Saratoga. A couple of decent finishes there and at Aqueduct would pay for a lot of feed.”

“I guess it would.”

“Old Mr. Hammet will take care of the other horses for as long as I want him to.”

They sat quietly. Tagliabue knew this was the time to tell her about Joshua’s death and the explosion that had holed his boat. But her features softened as she thought of something entirely foreign to death and destruction. He caught the look and said nothing yet about his mate. He reached across the table, put his hand in her hair, and kissed her lips gently. She closed her eyes and returned the kiss. Agnes Ann got up to pour. With her back to him, she asked: “Will you stay awhile, Tony?”

“We need to get off before dark.”

“I’ll take that as a yes.” She smiled as she put the mug down in front of him. She combed stray strands of hair from his forehead with her fingers before she turned to her chair.

“No new gray ones.”

He smiled this time, teeth showing bright against his sun-darkened skin. They drank coffee and took care of the cargo business. Jesse came in with a burst of salt air and youthful energy.

“Francine doing all right?”

“Yessir. She’s feisty now. We keep her away from the other horses in the morning, so she don’t get hurt bossing them around. Been like this since the weather turned. Ready to run, I guess.”

“Nobody ever recognized her?”

“Nossir. We exercise her early, about now in fact. People around here don’t carry stopwatches with them anyway. They know she’s a thoroughbred and a looker, but I don’t think anyone realizes how fast she really is.”

The man turned toward the boy’s mother. “Why is it so important to keep Francine a secret?”

“Well, first there’s Jack, y’know. I can’t get free of the suspicion that he still might try some devious trick to get her back, whether it’s a legal ploy or something else. I know that sounds paranoid. Besides that, we don’t want the filly to have a reputation for being fast before she even gets to the racetrack. We’d like to kind of sneak up on the opposition.”

“How fast is she?”

“She breezed four furlongs in forty-seven and change Monday.” She sounded like a proud mother, her body taut with controlled excitement.

“That’s a half-mile, right? And that’s a good time.”

“Real good,” the boy said, “especially this early in the year. She’s going to astound folks in Saratoga this summer. Including your grumpy friend Joshua White.”

Tagliabue kept his face bland and didn’t look at Agnes Ann. He would have to tell them about Joshua’s death soon. Not yet. Tagliabue couldn’t see any reason to darken the teen’s ebullient mood before he had a chance to show off his racing filly. Jesse moved about the kitchen, not doing anything, just moving, fiddling with the Bluetooth headset and mic he would wear under his helmet. He wanted to exercise the horse, Tagliabue knew, show his mother’s friend how well she ran. Tagliabue pushed his chair back. The boy headed for the door.

“She’s already tacked up.”

Agnes Ann smiled and went with them, shrugging on her barn coat as she walked. Francine was waiting, tied to a verandah post, head and ears up, muscles rippling under her glossy red coat in the early sun. The boy vaulted into the small saddle and walked her out to the training track as the two adults followed on foot along a weeded-over trail. The chestnut pranced and blew and shook her head, as anxious as her rider to run.

“She looks good, Aggie.”

“Yeah, she’s in great shape, eating well and training well.”

The horse and rider moved ahead of them.

“You hearing anything?” Tagliabue asked.

“Only an e-mail confirming my registration for an $80,000 maiden race on July 29th.”

“Nothing from Jack?”

“No. Thanks be to God.”

The boy warmed up the filly on the dirt oval.

“Joshua didn’t show up this morning at Cronk’s.”

Jesse took her up to a slow canter, her feet scooping sprays of the dry track behind her.

“Oh, my. I hope he’s not in the drunk tank again.”

“He’s not.”

Francine ran by them for the first time, still throwing her head as her rider kept a hold on her. Agnes Ann smiled at Jesse. When the horse was past and the pounding sounds of her gait had abated, she turned to Tagliabue for the first time since they’d taken up their positions at the track fence.

“Have you heard from him, you mean?”

“Not exactly.”

Her smile faded at her friend’s tone.

“What’s wrong, Tony?”

“He’s dead, Aggie.”

“Oh, God.” She shut her eyes. Tagliabue figured she was saying a prayer for his mate’s soul. She did things like that. The filly was stretching out by then and came by in a blur of thundering hooves that rattled the fence rails.

“The poor man,” she said into the silence that followed the horse. “What happened, do you know?”

“I’m not sure what happened. I think someone killed him.”

“You mean murdered?” Her mouth was open slightly as she looked up at his weathered face, crow’s feet outlining blue eyes that avoided hers as they looked out at the running animal. She took his jaw in her hand and turned it to her.

“You’d better tell me what you know.”

“As soon as we’re finished this training session. Let Jess have his moment.”

Agnes Ann accepted that wisdom with a quick nod. They watched Jesse and his horse circle the track again at speed, the beast’s muscles bunching and stretching as she ran in long strides, the boy’s lips cracked open at the pleasure of it all. Jesse slowed Francine and walked her one more lap.

Agnes Ann left Tagliabue at the rail. She walked out to the middle of the track and gave instructions to her son as he close-hauled the panting, prancing filly around her. Horse and rider set off again in a light canter. Trainer and rider spoke to each other on their electronic devices. Agnes Ann gave instructions, the boy talked about the horse’s breathing, her stride, her attitude. When the animal started showing signs of tiredness, they moved to a two-stall starting gate and practiced loading her into the contraption, the boy sitting quietly on the filly’s back. Agnes Ann closed the back flaps of the gate and let the filly stand in the enclosed space. She climbed in and led the horse out again, then back in. After three times doing this, she said to Jesse: “Tomorrow we begin with some fast starts.” He tapped his helmet in a one-fingered salute and rode off slowly toward the barn.

She came back to Tagliabue: “He’ll be a while brushing her down and feeding her. Come to the house.”

Seated again at the kitchen table, Agnes Ann asked about the death of Joshua White.

“We were supposed to meet at one forty-five. He didn’t show. I was pissed. I was out to sea an hour or so, the bilge pump lit off. When I went below to find the leak I found Joshua’s body. His chest is a mess.”

Agnes Ann spoke in a small voice: “We’d better look, do you think?”

“Aye. We’ve got some decisions to make.”

They walked down to the beach to find the boat grounded forward, its stern still afloat. They climbed aboard. The cabin deck was mostly dry although they could hear the pump kick on once in a while as it cleared water from the aft bilge. Agnes Ann walked over to Joshua White’s body and looked without touching it. Tagliabue pulled a coarse blanket from another bunk and handed it to her. She covered the corpse.

“I’d better call Constable Fletcher,” she said in the same small voice.

“And tell your son.”

“Yes. Yes, I’ll have to do that.”

Westfarrow’s sole police presence arrived at the horse farm in forty-five minutes. He was a stout, graying man with a belly and a lugubrious manner. He greeted Agnes Ann with a smile and a peck on the cheek, and he remembered Tagliabue. He seemed in no hurry to view the body.

Ian Fletcher accepted a cup of tea. They sat in the kitchen, joined by young Jesse, as Tagliabue told of finding his mate’s remains in the cabin of his boat earlier that morning. Jesse seemed quiet but not surprised; his mother had talked to him.

“His body was jammed up against the hole in the hull, I guess, but I actually did not see it until it had been pushed away by the force of the water when I went to cruising speed. I don’t know why else the boat didn’t flood sooner.”

“Did you notice anything else when you discovered the poor man?” Fletcher asked. “Any smell, for instance? Any weapon?”

“No, nothing. We’d been underway for nearly two hours by then. Everything in the cabin had had a good wash.”

“When was the last time you were on the boat? Before you set sail this morning, I mean.”

“Yesterday afternoon. The hay truck met me at about two thirty. I’d been through the boat by then. I was looking to be sure everything was dry so the hay wouldn’t get wet. I think I can say for sure that there was no damage at that time, say half past one or so.”

“Is there anyone you can think of—any of you—who would want to damage the boat?”

They all looked at the policeman. Tagliabue and Agnes Ann harbored vague suspicions about her ex-husband, Jack Brunson, who lost the filly to her in the final divorce decree and who suspected even then, two years ago, that she might develop into a special racehorse. Their suspicions were unformed and nowhere near ready to be aired to the police. Jesse knew nothing of these suspicions. All three shook their heads at Fletcher.

“How about Mr. White, the victim? He have any known enemies? Anyone with a reason to want him dead?”

“Joshua was a rough character. Hung around waterfront bars and did his share of drinking. I guess he had a fight or two, but nothing serious enough to kill over, I don’t think. He was my mate for a decade or more and I never saw or heard any threats.”

Constable Fletcher sighed once, said: “Well, I guess we better view the body.”