settling

     She knew almost everyone else there. Chairs had been set up, the same white plastic ones that would see a lot of use during wedding season, which was coming right up. She couldn’t remember seeing chairs in the cemetery before, but it made sense if there was going to be speaking. They called this a memorial service rather than a funeral. More agnostic, she guessed. She sat down on a chair in the back row. The front row was empty, awaiting the family members.

     There was a podium in front.  It was banked with flower arrangements to either side. All hothouse flowers, thought the President of the Garden Club. Nothing like the tasteful arrangement of seasonal—well on the mainland if not here—peonies and hydrangeas she herself had sent.  Reverend Paul sat in a chair to the side. He knew where his bread was buttered, Merideth thought. The church roof. And there was that foundation issue. The church wasn’t built on sand, exactly, but the rocks surely needed work.

    Half the island had turned out, it seemed like.  There were even some people standing. The old folks always turned out for funerals, but in this case it was also the sensational quality of the death. “Oh my goodness!” Merideth muttered. “Its Young Earl!” He had cleaned up nicely and was wearing a suit and tie. He sat down as far away from Merideth as he could get in the back row. She watched her son make his way through the hedgerow to stand in the back. In uniform, for once. He looked good in it, she thought complacently.

     They waited for a while. The day, for once, was calm. The faint sound of a lawn mower merged with the twitter of birds and the low voices of people gossipping. Merideth glanced over at Earl. He was chatting with a hippyish young woman she recognized as a frequent clam digger in the pond.  Seemed chummy with Earl.

death by nail gun

The President of the Garden Club checked herself in the rear view mirror. The white hat with its black grosgrain ribbon looked right and went nicely with the black and white print linen dress and spectator pumps. She wondered if maybe the wisp of black veil wasn’t a little too too. Oh well. And she damn well wasn’t going to wear the sunglasses the cataract surgeon had said not to leave home without. So rude, to cover your eyes. Especially at a funeral.

    There was a packet of Kleenexes in her purse—not that she expected to weep for this man she had had one conversation with. But she could weep for poor Kate and her brother, who didn’t yet know that they’d lost not only their father but their own sense of immortality. They were still too stunned by the violence and the suddenness of it all.

     Unless, of course, one of them was responsible. The brother, now, he was a bit of narcissist and angry with his father. And the girl—hard to know with girls. She seemed to love her father but had insisted on taking up with Bobby against his wishes. A rival father figure. Love could get twisted. She could have hired someone. She could be in need of money. Well, that could go for the boy, too. Or Kat. One thing she’d learned about people over all these years: one never knew.

    She’d better get going. Never pleasant, these events. And there seemed to be more and more of them all the time.  She dropped the key to the SUV CK into the glove box and got out, smoothing her skirt to make sure it wasn’t hiked up over the derriere.

     Oh, and there was a man with a TV camera over by the triangle in the road. He’d set up on a tripod, and a young blonde woman was checking her makeup. Of course, thought Merideth. The last time TV people had flocked to the island was when one of the Kennedys got married at the Catholic church. Now it was Death by Nailgun, as Islanders were calling it. Though it hadn’t been, of course.

the dead yard

  Chief Joseph looked down over the cemetery. Great Salt Pond glittered in the morning sun. Still not many boats in the harbor. Too early in the season. Even with the drug busts and beach parties, the bike wrecks and drunk and disorderlies, he was kind of looking forward to season. It was, frankly, boring in the winter with nothing but the occasional domestic or overdose—and all of those fraught because he knew everyone. For weeks he had nothing to do but paperwork.

     He had parked his car on a dirt road behind a strip of trees, so it was unlikely anyone at the funeral would notice him yet. The press had seen him drive up. They had staked the place out first thing in the morning, when the chairs were being set up. He should have known they would be there. People were already calling it “The Nailgun Murder.” It wasn’t, according to the autopsy report. Death had been caused by a bullet through the eye and one through the heart. Bullets from a gun like the Glock that had been found at Bobby’s  shack. The tests would soon show whether it was that Glock. At a guess, it would be.

     He had offered his mother a ride, but she said she preferred not to be associated with the police presence. The first wife had apparently showed up without telling her kids. Fishy, he thought. Here to make sure he was dead? Crow over the body? Well—ashes. Make sure her children got what was coming to them in the will? He wished he knew what was in that will. Hadn’t been submitted for probate yet. Lot of money there. Too much. Though he’d seen families fight over a coffee pot. Didn’t really matter how much there was, it was the love they were fighting over. His wife Katie’s family, now. Good example. Might be better to have only one kid. That way when you die there’s no question of who gets grandma’s china. Well, unless you married a younger woman like this rich guy did. And big money could lead to big problems. Like, maybe, murder.

dead-eye's

     Merideth sipped her house red and watched the other two. Kat was drinking her second martini, to no visible effect. Bobby was still nursing his first draft beer.

     “So what should we do?” Kat asked.

     “We?” Merideth thought. It had become “we” awfully quickly. “I was planning to go to the service tomorrow,” she said. “After all, the poor man was killed in my yahd! “

      “Or nearby, anyway,” said Bobby.

     “Well of course I’m going. That’s why I came out here! The man was my husband for twenty years, whatever happened after that.”

       “I imagine Kate will want me to come with her,” said Bobby.

       “She has her brother,” said Merideth.

       “Well we’ll see,” said Bobby.

      “The kids are going to faint,” said Kat. “I’ll try to stay in the background.”

      “And then what?” Merideth looked at her.

       Kat toyed with the lobster tail she hadn’t eaten but a bite or two of.  Probably rubbery, Merideth figured. Nobody in town could cook a decent lobster.

     “I don’t know. I’ll have to figure it out as I go along. I just want some kind of closure.”

       “That will be difficult to attain if we don’t figure out who killed your ex husband,” said Merideth.

the ex-wife

“I loved him, you know.” Kat set her teacup down with a click. Too much of a click.

    “You must have,” said Merideth. “You have two children who are part Malcolm.”

      “They should have told me that he died, that they were coming here.”

      Merideth nodded. “They should have. We are old enough to know that. But they were afraid of hurting you.”

     “Wusses,” said Kat.

     “How did you find out?” asked Bobby.

     “Google. How else? I have an automatic search that turns up references to Malcolm. I started it when he began to sell off assets. They used to be my assets too. He is a fairly well known personality—has been for years. Less so now. I wasn’t expecting a news item about his murder. It was only in the Block Island Times. I don’t know how the national press hasn’t picked it up.”

      “Memorial Day weekend. Probably not in the office,” said Merideth. “What are you going to do now?”

       “I don’t know,” said Kat. “What I want to do is have a stiff drink and talk about it. Can I take you two out to dinner?”

       “Merry?”

       “Well, thank you kindly.  Let me just put my face on. Would you like to freshen up, Kat?”

     “I’ll use your bathroom, if I may.”

     “There’s a powder room over there,” said Merideth. I’ll be right back.”

      Kat reappeared, looking perhaps a little smoother than before, thought Bobby, but not much.  She had been smooth to begin with. Her hair was blond with silver temples and streaks, apparently natural. She was wearing it in kind of a bun, so it was hard to know how long it was. She was slender, like her daughter—and her successor—but not as greyhound-tense as Malcolm’s thirdCK wife. Softer. The silver eyes she had bequeathed to her children were softer than theirs, as well. Or wearier. They had seen more unhappiness, likely. But the smile lines indicated that she hadn’t soured. She was wearing blue jeans, tight ones, not mom jeans, and a white T shirt. Light makeup. And an almost invisible gold chain with some kind of charm that dropped into her V-neck shirt between her breasts.

      “Where do you want to go?” Merideth had put on a red blazer that matched her lipstick, wrapped a jaunty print scarf around her neck and looked ready to take on the town.

     “Somewhere where we won’t run into the kids,” said Kat.

     “Better be, like, Eli’s or Dead Eye Dick’s then,” said Bobby. “Someplace expensive and grown up, not that we really expect you to pick up the tab.”

      “It was my idea,” said Kat. “And I still owe you for the tour.”

      “We’ll discuss that over dinner,” said Bobby.

Island Tour

“Hi, Bobby? This is the person you picked up earlier and drove to the Manisses. I was wondering if you had time to take me on the full island tour.”

    Bobby looked at his watch. Five o’clock. The next boat wasn’t due in for a while.  And there wouldn’t be any other island tours today. They paid better than waiting in line. “Sure. It’s $75 for the full treatment.”

   “I know. That’s fine. When can you pick me up?”

    “Five minutes?”

   “Okay. See you soon.”

   He pulled into the parking lot of the Manisses, got out and looked over at the hill. The kangaroos were hopping around. The yak was grazing.

   “Is that a camel?”

    He looked in the direction she was pointing. “Yep. It’s a kind of private zoo, though the owners let everyone look at the animals and feed them.“

    “I see a yak. Weird.”

    He looked at her. She wasn’t as old as he had thought. Her hair was prematurely gray, but she didn’t look any older than he was. Maybe younger.

     “Well you can walk down and look at the zoo any time,” he said. “Let’s hit the road. Why don’t you sit in the front of the van—you’ll be able to see better, and I won’t have to yell.”

     Over the years he had grown tired of his spiel—the Spring House and the spring, watercress blah blah, the Southeast Lighthouse moved back from the brink blah blah, the wind farm blah, and so on. He could do it in his sleep. So sometimes, to amuse himself, he made up stories to relate—how the island had once been floating and was towed out and anchored in its current position, how the original settlers were all from Fiji. People generally caught on and thought it was funny and they all had a good laugh. 

   But on this tour he was more interested in getting information than giving it. And his passenger seemed interested in getting information, too. Though the island didn’t seem to be the particular subject of her interest.

     “How did you wind up here on the island?” she asked, as he stopped near the bluff overlook.

     “Let’s walk out,” he said. “Don’t touch the bushes on either side of the path, they’re mostly poison ivy.”

    “So I see,” she said, in an I’m-not-an-idiot tone of voice.

    They walked single file to the overlook, a dangerous plunge to the beach below with a view of the deserted bluffs and coves to one side and the Southeast Light to the other.

     “I can see why you like it here,” she said.

    He looked at the windmills turning slowly. They looked huge, even though they were three miles offshore.

     “It’s very different now than when I got here. Thirty-some years ago now. I took a summer job as a bus boy when I was in school. Lived upstairs from the restaurant. Surfed all day, if there were any waves. Worked all night. The island was different then. Very short season. We were longing for tourists. More business, more tips. And it was isolated. No unlimited long distance, no cell phones, no Facebook. Just a bunch of misfits.”

     “And then?”

      They walked back to the van, and he held the door open for her. She got in, and he closed it. An old-world courtesy he performed mechanically.

     “And then?” she repeated when he sat down behind the wheel.

     “And then, and then, I graduated and went to Hawaii to surf bigger waves and work in different restaurants. And then I ate a lot of psychedelic mushrooms, and saw friends get ground into coral reefs and I became afraid of the water. And I washed up back here, where I knew the beaches and the breaks and the people and the climate and the rhythms. And I have never wanted to leave.”

     They drove past the rock at the entrance to Black Rock road. “Black Rock, the surfing beach, is down that way,” he said.

      “Why do they call it Black Rock? The rock isn’t black.”

     The rock, in fact, was gaudy colors of pink and aqua, with a couple of stuffed animals on top.

      “That’s not Black Rock, that’s the painted rock. Islanders decorate it when they get married or graduate or whatever. Black Rock is a rock in the water at the beach.”

    “Do you still surf?”

    “Once in a while. If the waves are perfect. But when it’s warm I’m mostly too busy driving.” He looked at her. “And what about you? Why did you come to the island?”

     “I’d heard about it for a long time. I used to know people here. I was curious. You hear the advertisements on NPR in Connecticut all the time. I just thought, why not sail away on the Block Island ferry?”

     He did not press her. Just waited.

     “And I’m glad I did. I’m learning a lot about what they see in the place.”

      They rode in silence for a while, broken only by Bobby’s occasional narrative.

     As they started down the hill towards Champlain’s marina, a moped zoomed up the hill going in the other direction. In the rear view mirror, Bobby saw Kate twist around to wave.

     “Oh my God,” said his passenger. “Those are my kids!”

     Bobby looked at her. “What is your name?”

     “Katherine Addams,” she whispered.

    “I thought so,” he said. “That makes three.”

    “People call me Kat.”

    “Well it’s out of the bag now.”  He circled at the bottom of the hill and drove slowly up. The moped was out of sight. “I want to introduce you to a friend of mine,” he said. “We need to have a chat.”

     “I guess we do,” she said.

the open sea

    He went wide around the North Light. There was a rip there that had taken more than one fisherman to his death. As they passed it, the wind hit them and the bow of the boat started banging against the chop. Bill’s eyes brightened and he opened up the throttle until the boat was hydroplaning over the waves. Kate put on one of the life preservers that had been issued with the rental boat. Bill saw her and laughed.

   “Scared, Kay?” he shouted. “I won’t sink us.”

   “Cold,” she shouted back. He certainly seemed to know how to drive the thing, but she was nervous. “I wasn’t dressed for this. Let’s go back.” He looked disappointed.

   He loved speed, the adrenaline rush it gave him. And danger. That was one of the things he liked about acting, especially on stage. The knowledge that something could go wrong at any time sharpened his focus. He could live in the moment, adrenaline buoying him.  He didn’t think about the past or the future, or himself and his life. He just had to surf the wave.

    Reluctantly he made a tight arc and headed back to the Cut. He shouldn’t have left Great Salt Pond anyway in a boat he didn’t know. He was no mechanic.