Stone Cove Island (11 page)

The marina was lit with the dim, brownish light I’d come to recognize as generator produced. No one had bothered to put their boats back in the water after the storm here, though the slips were much less damaged than in
the harbor. It was too close to the end of the season. I wondered what there was for Paul Guthy to do out here at this time of year. He worked as the caretaker of the marina. Grant had owned the business, but now the town ran it.

Paul was there tonight, I could see through the office window. He had his back to me, his feet up on a chair, while he watched football on TV and drank a beer. I leaned my bike against a dock piling and rapped gently on the door as I opened it. There was no one else here, and I didn’t want to startle him.

Paul turned to glare at me but kept one eye on the game.

“Yeah?” he said. He said it like he wasn’t particularly interested in what I might say.

“Hi,” I started, realizing I had come with no plan. I didn’t know Paul, except by sight. I was here to ask him about his niece’s murder twenty-five years ago. For all I knew, he was a suspect at the time. For all I knew, he was the one who had killed her. Wasn’t it true that most violent crimes took place between people who knew each other, and even more often, people who were related? There was no tactful way to start the conversation.

“Hi,” I started over. I decided to go with a lie. “I’m doing a research paper for school about island history. I know your family has been on Stone Cove a long time, and your, uh, business has been really important to the island?” Why was I making it a question? Paul grunted. It could have meant “go on” or “get out.” I really couldn’t tell.

“Your family’s owned the marina boatyard for a long time?”

He stood up now, staggering a little and I realized he was drunk. He lumbered toward me, just a step or two, and glared harder. “What do you want?” he said. His question didn’t sound like a question.

“I’m a senior at Stone Cove High and—”

“I know who you are,” he said. I didn’t know if that was true. “You got some nerve, coming here to ask about my family, our business, when you know they took it and your family’s part of them that did.”

“Do you mean, now that the town runs it? My family’s not part of the town council.”

“It was my brother’s. They wanted it and they made sure they got it.” His eyes were bloodshot. I’d always assumed that Grant had gone bankrupt before he’d died, and that was why the marina ended up being taken over by the town. Paul obviously felt that things hadn’t worked out fairly, whatever had gone on. “So what are you here for? You got an anchor for me, too?”

For a moment, I wasn’t sure I’d heard him right. I wanted to ask him to repeat himself. But the rage radiating off him made me change tactics instead. “Well, it’s not so much the business I wanted to ask about. For my report, I want to write about notable women from the island. I’ve been reading about your niece, Bess Linsky and—”

Now he lunged toward me, yelling. His words were garbled and furious and the only thing I could decipher was “Get out!”

In a panic, I backed away as fast as I could, through the jangling glass door and past the stacks of fishing rods and lures. Paul kept coming. My bike was about fifteen yards
behind me, on the dock. I could turn and run, I thought. He was in bad shape, and I was probably faster. But I was too scared to turn my back on him. I felt my way backward, one hand guiding me along the railing that edged the water. I took big, awkward steps, keeping my eyes on him but picturing in my mind how much farther it would be to my bike. Damn. Why hadn’t I parked it facing the road? Now I would have to turn it around before I could get out. It was stupid to come out here alone, at night, without telling anyone where I was. On the other hand, why should I have been worried? Stone Cove Island was safe. Nothing bad ever happened here. Or, almost nothing.

Paul was getting closer. He was ranting less in favor of moving faster, which seemed to take some effort through his beer haze. Every few steps, he would lose balance and I would make up a little ground. It was three, big, backward steps, I guessed, maybe four, until I got to my bike. If I went any faster I might overshoot the end of the railing and end up in the water. When I got to the place the railing stopped, I kept my hand reached out behind me and made my steps very straight. Three, two. On one, I hoped I would collide with the metal handlebars and not the bay. Instead, I collided with something else. It was a someone actually. He grabbed my arm. Paul pulled up short, startled. I turned around, now even more terrified, and saw Charlie.

“Come on,” Charlie hissed. “Get out of here.”

Instantly we turned and ran, leaving my bike behind and Paul staring after us. I looked back once to see if he would follow, but he didn’t. I thought of a junkyard dog, running only the length his chain would allow him to go.

We ran as far as we could, which was almost to the lighthouse. We sat down on the rock just outside. I was gasping for air.

“Charlie, what are you doing out here?” I panted.

His lungs were heaving, his eyes wild as Paul’s, but clear. “I think you mean, what are you doing out here? And thank you for showing up when you did?”

“Yes,” I said. “Both of those. Thank you.”

He straightened, catching his breath. He avoided my gaze, glancing back toward the dock. “I felt bad about the library today. I wanted to explain. I came to your house, but you were just leaving on your bike. So I ran after you.”

“You ran here? It’s three miles.” The deer and raccoon sounds were now making sense.

“Yeah,” he said. “It’s a pretty long run. What were you doing at the marina at night?”

I wanted to tell him the whole story. There were so many pieces he’d missed, I had to think where to start. It felt like a big jumble.

“Well,” I said, “the first thing is, I found my mom’s diary from when she was in high school. But that’s not why I’m out here. I can tell you more about the diary later.” I hesitated, then added, “If you’re interested.”

“I’m interested,” he said.

“When I was at the library today, I was looking up the stuff I told you about. I found it in the
Providence Journal
. The three people who found Bess’s things after the murder. One was Billy Landron. You remember the Landrons? They moved to London?”

He nodded.

“Another was Paul. Bess’s uncle. He was out surfing when Billy found her clothes and hair in the lighthouse. I thought I could ask him to tell me about it, but when I got there, he was drunk and, um, unfriendly. I should have left right away. He was angry when I asked about his family and the marina, and then when I mentioned Bess’s name, he completely freaked out. I don’t know what would have happened if you hadn’t been there.”

“Me either,” Charlie said, looking serious. “Do you think he killed Bess?”

I shuddered. “I kind of do now.”

“Who was the third person? At the lighthouse?”

I hesitated again. “I’m really not sure whether I should tell you.”

“Why? Of course tell me,” he said.

“Okay. If you’re sure you want to know. It was your dad.”

Charlie took this in, looking stunned.

“He’s never talked to you about Bess or any of this, has he?”

“No. He hasn’t.” Charlie shook his head, his jaw tight.

“He took Bess to the Spring Fling before that summer,” I went on, even less sure about telling him this part. “Your mom was really upset about it.”

Charlie sat there, very quietly not reacting. It was too much, too uncomfortable. I had to find a way to get off the topic.

“You said you came over to explain something?” I asked. I was nervous to hear what he had been going to say, but anything was better than watching him process what I’d just told him.

“Yeah,” he said. “But it’s also an ‘I’m not sure whether I should tell you.’ ” He had a girlfriend in Boston, I realized suddenly. That’s what this is about.

“Okay,” he began. “First of all, I’m sorry about this afternoon. I handled it really badly.”

“It’s a side of you I wasn’t familiar with,” I said in a tone I hoped sounded detached.

“So I’m just going to tell you the whole thing, how it happened. And I hope I’m doing the right thing.” He looked at me for confirmation, which was hard for me to give since I had no idea what he was about to say.

“After you left the other day—when my mom came in?”

I laughed. “Yes, I remember that part.” It’s not like I needed my memory jogged.

He laughed too. “My mom said she wanted to talk to me. She’d heard—I guess she was standing there for a while—she’d heard us talking about Bess. She told me she was really worried about me digging up the past. She said she understood about me wanting to be a journalist, but that it was a bad idea for me to be talking about any of this stuff with you.”

“Me specifically?” I asked.

“She told me that she’d known your mom really well in high school and that she’d had some serious problems with depression.” He looked at me, to see if this road was okay to continue down. I nodded. It’s not like this was exactly news to me. “She said after Bess died, your mom was in a really bad state. She said it got so bad your mom had to be hospitalized. She tried to kill herself.” Charlie looked at me to see if he was still on familiar ground. He wasn’t. But
I wanted him to go on. “So after, she recovered, I guess. Your dad helped get her through it and they ended up getting married. But my mom said she’s worried that if all this gets dredged up again, if your mom starts fixating on what happened, that she could get sick again.”

My mother had tried to kill herself?
I took this in. I hadn’t actually thought I was endangering Mom, despite what my father had said. I thought he was just worried about upsetting her and even then mostly because of what a pain she could be. But then I thought about Cat, the Cat of Mom’s diary, and her games. Why was she saying this? Why was she so concerned about my mother suddenly, when it was obvious how much they disliked each other? I had no idea what to believe. Charlie was looking at me like he was afraid he’d inflicted serious damage. I wanted to reassure him. And change the subject.

“Oh, is that all?” I said, trying to make my voice light. “I thought you just didn’t want to kiss me.”

His head shot up, his eyes locking with mine. His lips curled in a puzzled smile. “Are you serious?” he whispered.

“Very,” I said. Before he could respond, I stepped forward and pressed my lips against his.

Maybe this was only “apocalyptic energy”; maybe whatever flame had sparked so suddenly between Charlie Pender and me would die the second things returned to normal on the island. On the other hand, maybe things would never return to normal ever again. And right now, that didn’t scare me so much.

IT FELT LIKE THE
longest day of my life but by the time Charlie and I walked back it was only eight o’clock. I was worried I would never see my bike again. I could see Paul in his fury dumping it right in the bay. It turned out that while Charlie had been taking a break from me, he had not taken a break from Bess. He’d spent time at the library too, trying to find any mention of the Black Anchor Society. He’d come up empty though, both in Internet searches and local history books. Mary Ellen and Cathy, the librarians, didn’t know anything about it. We talked the whole way back, piecing together what we each had gathered on our own. Charlie wanted to see the diary, so when we got to my house, I signaled for him to follow me to the shed. The gravel crunched thunderously under our feet, though we were trying to be quiet. Why didn’t it make noise in the daytime? I flipped the light and showed Charlie in, handing him the diary.

“Here,” I said. “You catch up. I’m just going to duck my head in and tell my parents I’m back so they aren’t out looking for me. Maybe there’s something about Paul in there.” I didn’t know if my mom even knew Paul. After tonight, I hoped she didn’t.

The back door swung in with a creak. I balanced on the threshold on the arches of my sneakers.

“Mom?” I called. She came from the kitchen, a light dusting of flour on her sleeves. “I have to run to Meredith’s for a sec to get a book.”

“Eliza, it’s a school night.” She pursed her lips. I smelled pumpkin bread.

“Mom, the book’s for school.” It was easy to work up exasperation, even for a lie.

“All right. Don’t be late.”

“Is Dad home?” I let my book bag drop to the floor.

“No, he had another council meeting. Preservation review again.”

“You didn’t go?”

She shrugged. “He’ll be home in an hour or so. He didn’t think it would go too late.” Charlie and I had an hour. I walked through the house to the front, left that way and then backtracked to the shed. Charlie was deep in the diary. He barely heard me come in.

“Nothing about Paul so far,” he said. “But … wow. It’s unbelievable. It’s like they were all different people back then.”

“I wonder,” I said. “If my mom’s still like that underneath and just better at hiding it.”

“It must be hard to read,” he said.

“It’s … yeah. Upsetting. But I knew some of it. Not the part you told me. But she’s still up and down. Like in the diary.”