A Side of Murder Read online

  “Search me,” Jenny said, clearly annoyed at not being in the know for once. “He’s not very forthcoming. Remember there were a lot of rumors about him and drugs when we were in high school? Everybody thought he was going to end up on the other side of the jailhouse door. But after his mom died—that was just after you left for cooking school—he got his act together, went to the police academy in Boston, then joined the Harbor Patrol up Cape in Provincetown.”

  “But why come back to Fair Harbor?” I asked. “It wasn’t like he’d had such an easy time of it here.”

  “Not his choice,” Jenny pointed out. “He made a name for himself in P’town and got promoted to master level last year, but the only opening for a harbormaster was Fair Harbor.”

  “And how did he make this name for himself?” I asked. It was ridiculous how much I wanted to keep talking about Jason Captiva.

  “He busted some drug ring,” Jenny said, and added, “Takes a thief to catch a thief, I guess.”

  Suddenly I felt sorry for Jason. Jenny was not a malicious person, far from it, but if she was any indication, he’d never outlive his youthful reputation.

  Which I happened to know was undeserved.

  * * *

  * * *

  Over the course of that summer at the Inn, before that disastrous kiss, Jason and I had come to know each other in a way that was somehow more intimate than any physical relationship could have been. He told me things that I was certain he’d told no one else. Sitting on the heavy, scarred workbench under the deck, I listened, while Jason paced and talked. About his mother’s stage four breast cancer. About the marijuana that he bought for her, the only thing that eased her pain. How he went down to Stone Harbor every week to meet his dealer, a guy from P’town who brought it in from Boston by speedboat.

  “You don’t smoke it yourself?” I’d asked. “Because you kind of have a reputation, you know. People, kids at school, they’ve seen you with that guy. . . .”

  “I wish,” he said with a little laugh. “But my mom needs it all. Really needs it. She totally bogarts that joint.”

  He smiled crookedly at me and I smiled back, even though it wasn’t really funny. I knew his mom, of course. Everybody did. Mrs. Captiva, until she’d gotten so sick, had been the school nurse at Fair Harbor Elementary for years. She was as straitlaced and proper as, well, as my nonna, my grandmother on my mom’s side and a woman who, I am quite sure, never had anything to report at her monthly confession at St. Anthony’s. But maybe even my nonna would have smoked weed if she was in as much pain as Mrs. Captiva.

  * * *

  * * *

  Sitting there in Jenny’s kitchen, I reflected on how much had changed in the decade or so since Jason had had to buy from drug dealers what would now be considered medical marijuana. And I wondered not for the first time if I would have been as brave as Jason if it had been my mother who had been in that situation.

  I thanked Jenny for the coffee and the information and headed back to Aunt Ida’s, where I banged out the article on Estelle’s death on my laptop. It was short and just the facts, ma’am. Or such facts as Chief McCauley had seen fit to share with me.

  FAIR HARBOR WOMAN FOUND DROWNED IN ALDEN POND

  Fair Harbor police have confirmed that the body of a woman found late last night in Alden Pond is that of Estelle Kobolt, 67, a longtime Fair Harbor resident.

  The body was discovered at approximately 10:30 p.m. by a patron of the nearby Bayview Grill who attempted unsuccessfully to bring it ashore. By the time police arrived, a strong ebbing tide had pulled the body out into Crystal Bay. Search efforts by the Harbor Patrol were initiated, and Ms. Kobolt’s body was discovered at 3:42 a.m.

  Fair Harbor Police Chief George McCauley said that although the circumstances surrounding the death are under investigation, “We are proceeding along the assumption that this was a tragic accident.”

  Tragic accident. As I typed, I kept seeing Estelle’s face, blurred with lipstick and mud. The snail. I was sure I was right. There were things about Estelle’s death that really didn’t add up.

  At 5:50, I e-mailed the story to Krista, with a note saying, “Here’s the article. If you’re still in the office, I want to come over to talk this through.”

  Krista responded with “k. here ’till 7.” “k”? She was too busy to type “ok”?

  I figured I had time for an early dinner before heading over to the paper. I stood up and stretched, and Diogi, who had been snoozing at my feet recovering from his exhausting courtship of Sadie, immediately sprang into action. I coaxed Grumpy to life and we trundled off to Mayo’s, the venerable clam shack at Shawme Beach, where I ordered a crisp, golden mound of fried clams (made with whole, fresh clams—frozen clam strips are an abomination) and a lacy nest of gossamer onion rings. When I realized that Diogi was expecting me to share, I went back and ordered him a hamburger and a small fries. Onion rings and fried clams are brain food, and I needed to think. Thinking was not Diogi’s strong suit. This was a dog who honestly thought he was going to catch one of those seagulls dive-bombing us for stray fries.

  Comfortably full, I drove over to the Clarion’s offices. I parked and, leaving Diogi in Grumpy with his window cracked open, wandered back through the empty newsroom to Krista’s office, where I found her peering into a mirrored compact and applying her signature Chanel Rouge lipstick.

  Oho, I thought, Krista has a date—on a Thursday night no less. But I said nothing. Krista and I didn’t really talk about her personal life. She knew that I thought she had an amazingly casual approach to love and sex. Back in the day, when she was at college and I was at the Culinary Institute, she used to call me and laugh about her exploits. But try as I might, I just couldn’t hide what she called my “Yankee Puritan streak,” and so her confidences had ceased. We talked about many things—her studies, my internships, our families, Miles and Jenny, what was happening back on the Cape—but by mutual unexpressed agreement, we did not talk about men.

  When Krista saw me at her door, she snapped the compact shut and quickly tucked it and the lipstick back into the desk’s second drawer (also known by any woman who has ever worked in an office as the makeup drawer). She looked back at me and picked up a hard copy of what I took to be my story.

  “Thanks,” she said, waving the paper at me. “This should cover it.”

  “Really?” I asked. “Because I’d like to do a little more looking into this drowning thing.”

  Krista shook her head no. “McCauley called me. Wants you off this story. Said you couldn’t be objective.”

  “McCauley’s the one who’s not objective,” I protested. “He pretty much told me Estelle was not worth wasting his time on.”

  “You got him to talk?” Krista said, a note of admiration in her voice. “McCauley never talks. No wonder he doesn’t like you.”

  “It’s more than that,” I said. “Maybe he’s just a lazy SOB, but he’s determined not to look at the stuff here that doesn’t make sense.”

  “Like what exactly?”

  “Like why, if she fell off out on the dock when the tide was going out, she floated into shore right up to the breakwater.”

  “Maybe she didn’t fall off the dock. Maybe she fell in off the breakwater.”

  “Even at high tide, there’s only four feet of water there. Hard for anyone to drown in four feet of water, unless they were blind drunk, which apparently she wasn’t, given her ability to navigate from Town Cove to Alden Pond.”

  Silence for a bit as Krista chewed on that. “Maybe,” she acknowledged finally. “But I’ll handle it from here.”

  Then she stood up, shrugged into her Burberry, hoisted her shoulder bag, and sidled past me out the door of the office, her straight black hair swinging like a silk curtain around the nape of her elegant neck.

  “Gotta go,” she said over her shoulder. “And remember, you’re off th
e story.”

  I was more than a little surprised. It is one thing for the editor of the local newspaper not to deliberately offend the authorities. It is another thing to meekly do their bidding.

  Since when are you in McCauley’s pocket? I wanted to ask.

  Instead I said, “Okay, boss. I’ll get to work on that Bayview Grill review.”

  Which, of course, was exactly what I wasn’t planning to do.

  NINE

  The next morning, Diogi and I set off for the municipal pier. Krista wasn’t going to listen to me—that much was clear. I needed an expert opinion. Someone had to help me figure out the answers to my questions. And Jason was that someone. I just hoped things weren’t going to be made difficult by our shared history. As our little encounter at the Grill had made abundantly clear, he hadn’t forgotten what had happened between us so many years ago.

  * * *

  * * *

  It had been a quiet Thursday night in mid-August. We’d finished our shifts and were talking under the deck in the glare of the naked light bulb that Mrs. Logan had recently installed to deter what she called “troublemakers.” By which she meant teenagers making out. As if, I thought miserably.

  The tide was high and the water slapped softly against the breakwater. Something was bothering Jason, I could tell. For one thing, he’d been drinking. Just a few beers, but even a beer or two was unusual for him. I didn’t ask what was wrong. With the narcissism of youth, I’d hoped it was because he was working his way up to finally kissing me.

  Jason tilted his head back to take another swig from his bottle of Sam Adams. I watched the muscles in his throat working as he swallowed and thought I would pass out. He looked at me. Then he bent down and picked up a smooth gray rock, which he hefted in his hand.

  “I hate that light,” he said, his voice thick with an emotion I couldn’t name, perhaps had never encountered in my short, sheltered life.

  “Don’t,” I pleaded, suddenly frightened. “Leave it.”

  He paused and leaned into me. I could smell the leather of his motorcycle jacket, could hear his rough breathing. I was, just slightly, afraid.

  “Can’t,” he said. “Too tempting.”

  I was pretty sure he wasn’t talking about the light bulb.

  And then in one sure, swift motion, he launched the rock into the offending light. The glass shattered with a report like a bullet. We both stood very still for a minute or two, waiting, listening. Some footsteps on the gravel, probably someone walking toward the parking lot. Then nothing. It was late. We were safe. There was nobody still working in the Inn except for the kitchen cleanup crew. We breathed again. For a moment, I had lost my nerve, but that moment was past. Just like that, I didn’t care.

  Because Jason Captiva was kissing me. Gently but thoroughly kissing me. It was paradise.

  And then, out of the darkness, a woman’s voice, roughened by cigarettes and booze. “You’re gonna pay for that, boy.”

  Jason and I sprang apart guiltily. Well, I sprang apart guiltily. Jason simply stood very, very still, then reached for my hand and held it firmly.

  As we turned toward the voice, the woman lit a cigarette and her face was briefly illumined by the flame of the cheap plastic lighter. Estelle. Standing not five feet away from us between the breakwater and the workbench that took up most of the space under the deck. She casually dropped the lighter into the crocodile handbag she’d placed next to her on the wooden table. Never had I despised anyone like I despised Estelle Kobolt at that moment.

  “Don’t look at me like that, Miss Daddy’s Girl,” she snapped.

  “You spy on me and then don’t like the way I look at you?” I said with cold disdain.

  This, of course, only served to make things worse. “Does Daddy know what you’re doing?” she snarled back. “And who you’re doing it with?”

  And at that, to my eternal shame and regret, I pulled my hand out of Jason’s and stepped away from him.

  I was frightened and appalled at the situation I found myself in. What was I doing here with this older boy, almost a man, who rode a motorcycle (because he couldn’t afford a car, but still . . .), was rumored to do drugs, wore his long black hair in a ponytail? Why was I kissing a bartender, someone who hadn’t even gone to college, a destroyer of private property? I was a good girl with a bad boy. If my parents ever found out, I’d be totally grounded. Probably forever.

  Jason could have (and, in retrospect, probably should have) walked away from that shallow, self-absorbed girl, but he chose to stay and defend her.

  “She’s doing nothing,” Jason said, his voice deadly cold. “We’re doing nothing.”

  “Not what it looked like to me,” Estelle countered. “Looks to me like you’re screwing jailbait, boy.”

  Very slowly and very quietly, Jason said, “You keep your filthy mouth shut.”

  Estelle just laughed, the sound a crow might make if crows laughed. “That’ll cost you, too. Both of you.”

  And then she turned and left us there in the dark night of what might have been and now was lost.

  * * *

  * * *

  I pushed the memory away from me. I took a deep, calming breath. That never works, of course, but I always give it a try. I told myself that I was going to keep things professional. I would simply be talking to the harbormaster.

  That made me smile. The harbormaster is a kind of Old Testament god to kids on the Cape. When I was a kid in sailing club, we lived in terror that the harbormaster would find us not wearing our life vests. At the first sight of the official twenty-foot Grady-White with “Harbor Patrol” emblazoned on its side zooming out from Town Cove, the cry “Harbormaster!” would go up from boat to boat and a mad scramble begun to zip and clip. I don’t know what we thought the harbormaster would do to life vest scofflaws. Keelhaul us?

  I could see now what appeared to be the same Grady-White that had so impressed me as a child tied up at the dock. I hitched Diogi’s leash to the bike rack outside the front door, ignoring his look of despair. I wasn’t giving in to his guilt trips.

  In Fair Harbor, the offices of the Harbor Patrol are housed in an unassuming two-story building on Town Cove overlooking the town’s commercial municipal pier. I pushed through the door into the office with its picture window permanently fogged on the outside by the salt spray that dashed against it with every nor’easter. A couple of tired plastic chairs flanked a Formica coffee table holding some well-thumbed back issues of Boating World. Official forms of every size and description were stacked haphazardly on a rickety card table. Most of them dealt with things like shell-fishing permits and applications for moorings, which are tightly controlled and hotly contested. I could have sworn that the tattered posters on the walls (“Safe Boating Is Big Fun; Life Jackets—Let the Good Times Float”) had been around since Mrs. Whitelaw had taken our third grade class here on the best field trip ever (the then–harbormaster had given us all Junior Harbormaster badges).

  There was no one behind the counter marked “Reception” at the far wall, so I peered into a hallway leading off to the left, where a door with the word “Harbormaster” stenciled on it stood slightly ajar.

  I walked over and looked in hesitantly. The room was entirely furnished in gray metal. Gray metal desk, gray metal filing cabinets, gray metal desk chair. Nautical charts papered dingy beige walls. Jason was sitting at the battered desk but had swiveled his chair around to look out through the window behind it. His back was to me and he was doing that very, very still thing of his. Somehow I knew he wasn’t really seeing the beautiful view out to Town Cove and, beyond it, Little Crystal Bay.

  I rapped softly on the doorframe. “Hey. Are you busy?”

  He swiveled to face me. He said nothing. He looked extraordinarily tired. Shadows smudged the skin under his eyes, and his face, deeply tanned by years of sun and salt, had a leaden tinge to it. He mu
st have been up all night overseeing the search for Estelle’s body.

  “I can come back,” I found myself saying. “You look like crap.”

  So much for the thorough professional.

  Something almost like a smile touched Jason’s haggard face. Just a little lift at the corners of his mouth, but it transformed him, and for a moment I saw the boy I’d known so many years ago. He gestured me to the chair facing the desk.

  “No,” he said. “Now’s fine. How can I help you, Samantha?”

  So far, so good. Not exactly warm—Samantha not Sam—but he didn’t seem to hate me. Yet.

  “Krista’s short-staffed at the paper, so she asked me to cover Estelle’s . . . accident,” I lied.

  “So you’re a reporter now?” Jason said, frowning. “I thought you were a chef.”

  “Long story,” I said, grateful that he didn’t seem to know it. “I’m . . . taking a break. My Aunt Ida left me her house. And her dog, actually. I’m just trying to figure out my next steps.” Stop jabbering, Sam.

  I sat down, pulled a notebook and pen out of my shoulder bag, and gave Jason my most levelheaded, reporter-like gaze.

  “I’ll try to make this brief, then.” I checked my list of questions. We already knew who (Estelle), what (drowned), and where (in Alden Pond boatyard).

  “Any idea when Estelle died?” I asked. We would save how for later.

  “Well, the bodies of most drowning victims sink to the bottom almost immediately once the lungs fill with water. Depending on the water temperature, it usually takes a few days to a week before internal gases bring it up to the surface.”

  I winced involuntarily and hoped he hadn’t noticed. Professionals don’t wince.

  “In this case, though,” he continued, “the body was fresh. McCauley tells me that the coroner’s first estimate is within an hour or so of the time you found it.” Funny, I thought, he didn’t tell me that. “The body was floating because of the air pocket created by the jacket.” I found it interesting that Jason always said “the body.” Never Estelle. “He’ll know more after the autopsy.”