Pretty Dead, page 2
“This is my friend, Jack. He’s got some business down here. He’ll meet me after we’re done.”
“What business are you in?” Tara said.
“This and that,” I said.
“Jack’s a reporter. He may do a travel article on this area,” Roxanne said. “You know, which bed-and-breakfasts have the best muffins and all that.”
I looked at her. The best muffins?
She smiled.
“I’ll call you,” she said.
“I’ll be around.”
“Do you think they’ll let us see the girl?” Tara said, then looked at me and said, “Whoops.”
I smiled at her and put the car in gear. “Sometimes it isn’t what they tell you,” I heard Roxanne say as I backed out of the lot. “It’s what they don’t. That’s what I want you …”
When there was a break in the traffic—a slow procession of Suburbans, Volvos, a Porsche, and a Jaguar—I backed out. I drove up the main street, an eye on the rearview mirror. The Subaru pulled out and drove through the village the other way. I hesitated for a moment, then swung into an art gallery lot and turned around. As I moved back into traffic, I saw the white car turn left. I sped up and followed. I took the left, which led up the hill and out of town. A hundred yards up on the right was a white clapboard church, gleaming in the sun. The Subaru was parked at the side entrance. I pulled into a bookstore lot and sat.
This must have been the church where the kid spilled the beans. Roxanne and Tara would interview the church person. How long would that take? A half-hour? An hour? They’d have to ask exactly what the girl said, what she was like with the other kids, with adults. When did they first notice the marks? Did she tell anyone else?
I waited. Roxanne wouldn’t like this, but what else was I supposed to do? Let her head off to some estate in the middle of nowhere to tell a couple of rich, arrogant parents they were being investigated for child abuse? I was just watching her—
They came out, striding like they were all business, and got in the car. I backed to the rear of the bookstore lot and peered over the hood of a Range Rover. A golden retriever panted at me from the backseat but didn’t bark, this being Blue Harbor. The Subaru went by and I counted to ten and followed.
We went back down the hill to the center of the village. They took a right, drove under the elms, and took a left by the Blue Harbor library. I was five hundred yards behind and I followed. When I took the left, they were out of sight.
The road followed the shoreline, with the harbor to my left beyond the houses. For a quarter-mile or so, it was an extension of the village, the houses tucked together, separated by hedges and ivy-covered walls and fences. Then the road rose and banked away from the water and the drives were marked by stone walls and gates, the houses glimpsed through the trees and rhododendrons, the waters of Penobscot Bay glittering in the distance. If they turned through one of these gates I could lose them, so I sped up—and saw the Subaru turn to the left and disappear.
I slowed and peered down the drive as I passed. There was a glimpse of their car and then it was gone. I stopped at the next drive and turned around. Stopped short of the Connelly entrance and pulled against the hedges.
The place was marked by a number: 415. There was a gray-shingled gatehouse behind dense hedges, an empty boat trailer parked beside it. The driveway was paved with crushed white shells. There was no one in sight. I sat for a minute, then pulled back out and made a U-turn and drove back to the road to what appeared to be the edge of the Connelly estate. The line of demarcation was a point where the hedges were replaced by a stolid row of cedars, like soldiers on guard duty. The grounds of this next place were more open, and in the distance I could see the house, a white colonial with carriage houses and barns. The ground-floor windows were covered with what looked like plywood painted dark green to match the shutters.
I parked the Explorer across the road and walked up the drive.
I figured the owners had decided to sail the boat to Ireland or ski in the Andes. Or maybe they’d died and the kids were fighting over the place. No matter. Where the cedars thinned I could see the Connellys’ drive, then a glimpse of a gray slate roof. Just short of the first carriage house I checked the road and slipped into the trees.
I stayed behind the cedars and the banks of shaggy rhododendrons that edged the Connelly property, and I walked slowly but deliberately. Beyond the white house the trees and shrubbery opened up and on the Connelly side there was some sort of woven cedar fence. The fence extended to the end of the lawn, where steep ledges dropped to the shore of this finger of the bay, an expanse of blue-green water studded with spruce-bristled islands.
At the end of the fence I peered around. On the Connelly side a long dock spanned the rocks and ended on a float. There was an inflatable dinghy overturned on the float; a forty-foot yacht that looked a little like a lobster boat and a smaller, open boat, a Boston Whaler, were moored to orange buoys. The tide was out and the water was lapping the barnacle-covered rocks. I poked my head around and saw the main house, a massive, shingled “cottage” with turrets and field-stone chimneys and a screened porch on the side. Perennial gardens spilled toward the shore like brightly colored waves.
The Subaru was parked to the left, toward the rear of the house. Tara appeared at the car, opened the door and reached in for something, and then moved back toward the house and out of view.
In the stillness I heard gulls, an osprey, a catbird in the shrubs, then even the birds were quiet.
I moved behind the fence toward the house, stopped at the end and listened. Peered through the cracks. The Subaru was parked by a black Suburban and a dark green Volvo wagon. The Suburban had Massachusetts plates and semaphore-flag stickers on the back window. Very yachty. A black bmw 750 was parked in a separate three-bay garage. The side door to the house was closed.
I leaned against the fence and watched and listened. On the bay, all was tranquil. Inside it was hard to tell. The place was probably soundproof as a tomb.
A half-hour passed. I alternated between watching the house and the glittering bay. In the distance there was a windjammer with rose-colored sails, smaller sailboats showing like scattered tissues. Close by there was the looming rumble of a big marine engine, and then a lobster boat came around the next point, one guy at the helm, another in the stern. They moved from one brightly painted buoy to the next like lumbering bees buzzing from flower to flower. I watched the lobstermen, wondering if wealthy summer people paid them just to provide local color.
And I heard a snap.
“Can I help you?” David Connelly asked.
4
I recognized him from the newspapers, but in person he was bigger, better looking. He was wearing khaki shorts and a faded blue T-shirt that said barbados y.c., and his legs and arms were tanned and muscled.
“Just watching the boats,” I said.
“Technically, this is private property,” he said.
“No kidding. I thought it was Acadia National Park.”
I smiled and he gave a little snort and grinned and watched the lobstermen. The guy at the helm waved and Connolly waved back.
“I’m with Roxanne Masterson,” I said.
“I figured. What, you have the house under surveillance?”
“No, I drove her down here and it seemed a shame to miss the view.”
“Work for the State?”
“No,” I said. “We’re—”
I paused.
“Together?” Connelly said.
“Yeah.”
“Really. Kind of an unpleasant job she has.”
“It’s for a good cause,” I said.
“That’s very true, but I wouldn’t want to do it.”
“Good thing somebody does.”
“A very good thing.”
He held out his hand.
“I’m David.”
“Jack McMorrow.”
I took his hand and we shook. He held my gaze and I noticed that his eyes were mesmerizingly blue, an unnatural color, like somebody had colored them with crayons. His smile was a little crooked and it gave him a bemused, philosophical expression, like he’d seen a lot and had taken it all in stride.
We turned back to the water.
“The sea,” he said, gazing out at the glittering expanse. “You live on the coast?”
“No, inland. Deep in the woods. I like it, but this is beautiful.”
“The great equalizer. The sea puts everything in perspective, don’t you think? It’s where I go when I need to get my head screwed on straight.”
“Your boats?” I said, nodding toward the pair on the moorings.
“My refuge. The big one is called Escape. It’s a Hinckley Talaria.”
I looked at him blankly.
“If you’re into boats, that means something,” Connelly said. “I’ll take it out in anything. Maddie gets a little queasy in real heavy weather, but I love it. I’ll take it across, around Mount Desert and way Down East. Away from the day-trippers, you know? You get up there and there are stretches of coast that look like they did when the first Europeans came sailing down from the north four hundred years ago. They really do. I like to find a stretch like that and anchor and—”
He glanced at me and smiled.
“Sorry. Get me going on boats and I can ramble.”
“It’s okay. It’s interesting,” I said, and it was. I gave him a closer look. This wasn’t the David Connelly from the tabloids. Where was the party boy?
“So what do you do, Jack, if you don’t work for the State?”
“I cut wood some of the time,” I said.
“You mean, in the woods? Cutting down trees? Like a lumberjack?”
“Yeah.”
“Now there’s something I’ve never done. Dangerous?”
“Only if you begin to think it isn’t.”
“A lot of things are like that,” Connelly said. “Like these lobster guys. The risk actually increases the more comfortable you become with it. And then you’re out there and it’s winter and you’re talking, thinking about something else, your kids, your wife, your bills, and a rope catches your arm, your ankle—”
“And over you go,” I said.
“Vigilance is hard to keep up,” he said.
“True.”
“So what do you do when you’re not cutting wood?”
Crunch time. I considered how to answer. I could say I was a writer, seem less threatening. But there was something straightforward about him that said I should just tell the truth.
“I’m a reporter. A stringer for the New York Times.”
Connelly looked at me and tried not to show anything but couldn’t do it.
“Jesus,” he said.
We both looked toward the lobster boat, pivoting as it maneuvered close to a trap buoy. For a moment or two neither of us spoke and then I said, “But I’m not working.”
He didn’t answer at first, instead gave a brief, discouraged sigh.
“Reporters are always working, aren’t they?”
“I don’t write about Roxanne’s business.”
“Pass things along to somebody else?”
“Nope.”
“Ever?”
“No.”
“But you know what this is about?”
“I know what Roxanne does.”
“My daughter has bruises. We didn’t notice them at first. Makes you feel like kind of an idiot. This woman at the church play group, she saw them when Maeve got her shirt all wet and they took it off to dry it. By law they have to report this stuff, I guess. Would have been nice if they just told us, but I understand.”
“It’s a good law,” I said. “Actually, I’m surprised she had the—”
“The nerve? This lady’s by the book.”
“Even with you?”
David paused, looked away.
“Yeah, well. I guess she did.”
Then turned back to me.
“But you know this wasn’t from being hit or anything. More from being squeezed on the shoulders. We had an au pair from Ireland, we use a lot of Irish kids. Roots, you know? And they’ve all been just great. But this one, Devlin, had a mean streak. Probably the way she was raised. We fired her and sent her home.”
“Huh,” I said.
“That’s it.”
“Then I’m sure Roxanne will take care of it.”
“Now we’ve gotta find this kid, so she can back us up,” Connelly said.
“You don’t know where she is?”
“Sent her to Shannon, so I guess she’d be back home in West Cork, but who knows? She’s nineteen and single and we gave her a thousand dollars’ cash. Sort of a severance. She could have gone to Dublin or London or goddamn France for all we know.”
“I’m sure it’ll work out.”
“It has to. And Ms. Masterson, she seems very reasonable.”
“She is.”
“Seems to have common sense.”
“She does.”
“She asked me to leave her alone with Maddie. That’s my wife.”
“I know.”
He hesitated, watched the lobstermen move to the next trap. “But as a member of the press, you must know that sometimes this family is treated a little differently,” Connelly said.
“Better or worse?”
“Some of both.”
“So it averages out?” I said.
Connelly smiled.
“Some days are better than others,” he said.
“And this one isn’t too good, is it?”
“A social worker in the house and the New York Times in the bushes,” Connelly said. He laughed, said, “Oh, my word,” and shook his head.
I found myself feeling bad for the guy, like I should give him a pat on his broad shoulders. Despite all his money, looks, and clout, his life, for the moment, was a bit of a mess. But suddenly he turned to me, the blue eyes blazing, the crooked grin back.
“Come on in,” he said.
“No, I really shouldn’t—”
“Really. You need to meet everybody. I need you to know that we’re not some child beaters. Maeve is at her cousins’ house in Northeast Harbor so she’s not here. But you’ll see we’re normal, nice people. Hey, I’ll get you a cup of coffee. How ’bout something to eat?”
He took me by the arm and started to guide me around the cedars. I took a couple of steps and stopped, said, “That’s nice of you, but this is Roxanne’s thing. I really can’t get involved.”
“But you are involved, Jack,” Connelly said, showing he could see the heart of the matter. “Like it or not, you know some of the story and you need to get the full picture. You need to know that we’re like any other parents.”
He got me moving again, an arm on my shoulder. The lobster boat had gone beyond the next rocky point and there was a quietness in its wake that seemed to draw us closer together. We rounded the row of cedars and started across the lawn. Connelly still had his hand on my shoulder, like we were old friends, and I wondered if this was the same sort of easy intimacy he conveyed to women.
“You’ve got to understand, Jack, and I know you will,” he said, his smile only half-softening his words. “Our child comes first. Nobody hurts our daughter.”
5
There were five of them, three in their thirties or forties, two much younger women who looked like they might have been somebody’s college-age daughters. The older trio was two men and a woman. The guys were tanned and fit, legs crossed, sunglasses hanging on their chests from cords; the woman was white-blonde and very big-city. The younger two were slouched in their chairs and one was dark and very attractive. They were all sitting around a vast living room that opened onto the porch that overlooked the lawn and the bay. Laid at their feet like tribute were canvas tote bags packed for some sort of outing.
Connelly introduced me as Jack, a friend of Ms. Masterson’s. They looked at him for their cue, and when he smiled and put his hand on my shoulder, they smiled, too. If he’d jumped me, they would have piled on.
“Jack’s from—where in Maine?” David said.
“Prosperity,” I said.
“Oh, how quaint,” the blonde woman said. “Is there really such a place?”
“Very much so,” I said. “Has been for a hundred and fifty years.”
“Is it prosperous?” a guy with tortoiseshell glasses said. “Or did the founding fathers just have a keen sense of irony?”
They chuckled smugly.
“I think they were hopeful,” I said, prickling.
“This is Tim Dalton,” Connelly said. “Helps run Sky Blue, among other things.”
Dalton was wearing a green polo shirt with a logo I didn’t recognize. He was small and muscular, like a soccer player, knotted quads showing below his shorts. He sprang from the big leather chair and held out his hand in an earnest, manly way.
“Jack writes for the New York Times,” Connelly said.
“Oh, really,” Dalton said.
He and the others looked to Connelly for their next cue.
“But today is his day off,” he said.
They nodded in relief.
“New Yorker?” Dalton said.
“A lifetime ago,” I said, and I could tell I’d moved up a couple of notches in his estimation, not being a native Mainer. Tara would be assigned to a lower caste.
“McMorrow,” he said. “Sure, I’ve seen your byline. You write the northern New England stuff. I have friends at the Times. People I knew at Harvard.”
He dropped a couple of names. I was acquainted with them. Me and Dalton, we were simpatico.
“Jack, this is Kathleen Kind,” Connelly said. “Kathleen is a number cruncher.”
“And that’s not all she crunches, if the numbers don’t add up,” Dalton said, and the guys chuckled. Kathleen dropped the Wall Street Journal to her lap and gave a little wave from one of the couches. She was stiffly pretty, blonde hair trimmed just below her ears, jeans and a tight black T-shirt, black-rimmed glasses that perched on the end of her precisely pointed nose. She looked over the glasses at me like she was appraising me for Sotheby’s. Then she said, “Hi there, Jack,” in a knowing way, like we’d met at a party but I didn’t remember.
