The Lace Reader (33 page)

Rafferty then took over, telling the judge that Cal was a prime suspect in the disappearance of Angela Rickey, who was allegedly carrying his child.

Cal’s attorney countered by telling the judge that Angela Rickey had left the Calvinists, as agreed, to go home to her parents’ house to have her baby.

Rafferty said that Angela had never returned home to her parents and was not likely to do so.

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Cal’s attorney showed a sworn statement signed by Cal Boynton that stated he had never had sexual relations with Angela Rickey. Rafferty said that Angela claimed that the baby she was carrying did indeed belong to Cal and that she insisted on having the baby even though she wasn’t certain how Cal would feel about it. Clearly, Cal had not been pleased. Rafferty also pointed out that Cal had both means and motive. “Fathering a child would be bad business for a man who has made so much money preaching celibacy.”

Cal asked to say some words on his own behalf. In a performance that was half sermon, half sales pitch, Cal likened himself to John Newton, who wrote the hymn “Amazing Grace.” Like Cal, Newton had been depraved and unrepentant, a sinner of the worst kind, Cal explained—a slave trader, in fact. And like Cal, Newton had found his great deliverance at sea. The day of his conversion was not unlike Cal’s own, and like Newton, Cal had gone on to become an evangelist minister. “Saved by God’s grace and intervention,” Cal said.

“Who among us does not believe in redemption?” Cal implored, turning to his congregation—the lawyers, the judge, the Calvinists, and several townspeople who had come to attend the arraignment.

“Who among you will cast the first stone?” Cal continued. Several members of the council of churches sat along the back row. The Presbyterian minister muttered to the Methodist that
he
might cast a stone, if he thought he could hit Cal on the head with it from way back here. It was meant to be funny. The Presbyterians were the sect most offended by Cal’s practices and by his adoption of the Calvinist name, a name that had long been associated with their brand of Protestantism. Not that they wanted the name, mind you; the Calvinist label had been a PR nightmare for the Presbyterians, an association they’d worked hard to live down over the years. They weren’t likely to benefit in any way from the kind of press Cal was inspiring.

“I’d like to throw a stone or two.” A woman rose to her feet. Her red hat and purple dress stood out in a sea of grays and browns. 294 Brunonia

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Another Red Hat got up to stand with her. “Let’s make it a boulder,” she said. The judge motioned the women forward. Five more Red Hats joined them as they walked to the front of the courtroom.

“Good morning, ladies,” the judge couldn’t help saying. Red and purple was a color combination he didn’t see that often in the courtroom. He knew who they were, though: His wife had been threatening to start her own Red Hat chapter ever since she turned fifty.

“Your Honor, we would like to say a few words pertaining to the dangerousness of Calvin Boynton.” The group had appointed Ruth as official spokesperson, and Rafferty had spent an hour coaching her.

“Proceed,” the judge said.

“As many of you know, we were regular customers of Eva Whitney’s tearoom,” Ruth said. “We have reason to believe that Eva’s disappearance was no accident.” The woman continued without taking a breath before the judge was able to tell her that her information didn’t pertain to this case. “We witnessed the ongoing harassment of Eva Whitney, not only of her business but of her personally. He threatened her on many occasions.”

“That is a damnable lie!” Cal said, jumping up.

“Sit down, Mr. Boynton,” the judge commanded.

“What kind of threats did he make?” the judge asked.

“He threatened to burn her at the stake, for one,” the Gulf War mother who’d attended Eva’s funeral said. Rafferty noticed that she had gotten rid of her pastel hat and was now sporting a bright red one.

“Excuse me?”

“He called her a witch, and he threatened to hang her or burn her or drown her, all on different occasions.”

“He threatened to kill her, Your Honor,” a third Red Hat offered.

“One day when he didn’t know we were in the tearoom.”

“And how did Ms. Whitney respond to these threats?”

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“Well, she called the police, naturally.”

“This is true, Your Honor,” Rafferty said. “We have many reports of such harassment. At the beginning of April, Eva Whitney took out a restraining order against Cal Boynton.” Rafferty presented a copy to the judge.

“She told us,” the Gulf War mother said, “that if anything happened to her, it would be Cal Boynton who did it.”

“She was found all the way out by Children’s Island,” another Red Hat said. “Everyone knows that’s where they dump the bodies.”

A few years back, another body had been found out by Children’s Island. It was a murder case that had just been solved. And an association that everyone had. Like Eva, and maybe like Angela, the woman had been missing for a while before her body had turned up out by Children’s Island.

“Eva never left the harbor on her swims.” Ruth took over. “She was eighty-five years old, for God’s sake. She never could have made that swim.”

Cal’s attorney pointed out that there had been an autopsy on Eva. There had been no sign of foul play.

“There had been no sign of anything,” Rafferty interjected. “By the time we found Eva, her body had been picked apart by lobsters. We had to identify her by her dental records.”

The judge held Cal for thirty days. “If you want me to hold him longer, you’re going to have to get me a body.”

He wasn’t talking about Eva. He was talking about Angela Rickey.

As Rafferty left the courtroom, he walked over to the Red Hats.

“Good work, ladies,” he said.

“Do you think it helped?” the Gulf War mother asked.

“Very much.”

“What about the other girl . . . this Angela?” Ruth wanted to know.

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“Do you think he killed her, too?” the third Red Hat asked.

“I’m not sure what I think,” Rafferty said. He had a bad feeling about what had happened to Angela. All he knew was that he had to find her. And fast.

As the crowd thinned out, Rafferty realized that he was probably the only person in town who didn’t think that Cal had murdered Eva Whitney. Rafferty had let public opinion achieve his goal, which was to get Cal off the streets, at least for a little while. But he didn’t think for a minute that Cal had actually killed Eva. The reason was simple. If Cal had done it, he would have been smart enough to drop the body inside the harbor, where Eva usually swam. The fact that Eva was found “where they dump the bodies” was the one thing Eva had done wrong in her plan to stop Cal Boynton. The Children’s Island thing was meant to stand out. And it did. But to Rafferty it stood out for all the wrong reasons.

The swim was a good idea, but Eva had taken it too far. Besides, she was a Whitney. Any one of the Whitney women could have made that swim. At any age.

Rafferty told Towner that they were holding Cal. He didn’t tell her the rest of what had happened. He figured it wasn’t something she needed to know.

He wasn’t sure what he believed about Angela. He wasn’t wrong about the child. And he wasn’t wrong about the motive. He only hoped he was wrong about his growing feeling that she was either already dead, or soon to be.

u

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Rafferty couldn’t do much about Angela. But at least he could keep an eye on Towner. That’s what he told himself anyway. What Towner needed was R&R, and so he did his best to take care of her. He cooked. They sat outside and watched the boats. Tonight they sat on the porch looking out at the ocean. “Is Leah a sailor?” Towner asked. It was race week in Marblehead. She was looking out over the harbor at a line of spinnakered sailboats. The question was so far from his thoughts that it took him by surprise. “What?”

“Does your daughter sail?”

“Yeah,” he said, “a little.”

It was one of the only times Towner had spoken all evening. He should answer her if only to continue any form of conversation. “The boat she wants me to buy is a Scarab.”

Towner nodded as if she understood. “The need for speed,” she said. “She’ll grow out of that. Tastes change.”

“Is that true?” He was hopeful.

“Definitely,” she said.

Tonight Rafferty offered pasta, he offered to grill some steaks, but nothing seemed to appeal to her. He was running out of menu options. He was tired.

“I’m not hungry,” she said.

He stood up from the deck chair and stretched his legs.

“Then I’m going for a run,” he said.

“Now?” She seemed surprised. He’d been yawning all evening.

“Yup. And after that I’m stopping at the Willows for a chop suey sandwich.”

“You and your chop suey sandwiches,” she said.

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“You want to come along?” He always asked. She never said yes, but he kept asking.

“I’m tired,” she said.

“Ice cream?” He tried one more time. Ice cream was something she would always eat.

“I’m all set.”

Rafferty made three loops to Derby Street before he slowed down. With each turn he ran past Winter Island. Cal might still be in jail, but the rest of the Calvinists were just as dangerous as he was. Rafferty ran until he tired himself out. On the cut-through path to Willows Park, he finally slowed to a walk. He was pouring sweat. He passed neighbors sitting on porches, kids playing street hockey. Down on the beach, a neighbor’s kid stopped smoking weed and hid his stash behind a rock. At the end of the walkway, another neighbor called to her dog.

“Sorry,” the woman said to Rafferty as she put her dog back in compliance with Salem’s leash law. Rafferty tried to smile. Being a cop put an automatic distance between him and everybody else in town. Someone fishing on the end of a pier pulled in a striper. It waved through the air like a pendulum, catching the red of the falling sun and painting it across the sky.

The Harleys were lined up just across from the midway, the leather-clad bikers behind them in full costume. Accountants and dentists, Rafferty thought, but no, there were Hells Angels, too. They made a pilgrimage to Salem twice a year, thousands of motorcycles. Salem closed the streets for them. It was impressive. When they rode into town, you could hear the roar of the engines way back on Highland Avenue long before you could see them. People lined the streets in lawn chairs just to watch them roll in.

The bikers rode in the Heritage Parade, too. And they rode on The Lace Reader 299

Halloween. Behind the witches. Right between the preschoolers and the marching band.

Roberta spotted him before he saw her. She stood sipping her Diet Coke, admiring the row of bikes. When she saw Rafferty, she turned the other way.

Rafferty stood in line for a chop suey sandwich, then took a seat between the band shell and the dock. As soon as he sat down, the band went on break.

Perfect,
he thought.

But it was probably a good thing. With the band quieted, the sounds from Winter Island would echo over the noise of the midway, and he figured Towner was safe. He could make it back to the house in less than two minutes if he had to, and that was much faster than anyone could get to her.

But the Calvinists didn’t seem to be preaching tonight. When Rafferty passed on his run, the hangar was dark. Instead a group of them were proselytizing down here. One of them wore a sandwich board with the same printed message on both sides: jesus is hellbent on saving the hells angels. The bikers weren’t biting, but some of the local witches took the bait. They argued back and forth, throwing words and phrases at one another.

“Go back to Derby Street!” the Calvinists yelled at the witches, who had set up a booth to sell Celtic jewelry.

“Oh, go jump in the ocean!” one of the witches yelled at the true believer they called John the Baptist. But John wasn’t doing his ocean baptisms tonight. Instead the robed disciple had made his baptisms portable. He carried a bucket and a huge sponge, more suited to a student car wash than a soul-saving mission. Rafferty thought he should change his placard and offer a free Harley wash with every conversion. Some of the bikers had traveled a long way to be here tonight, and their bikes were very dusty.

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In the last few weeks, Rafferty had run background checks on most of the Calvinists, particularly the robed ones and the women who reportedly had gone after Angela the first time. John the Baptist’s real name was Charlie Pedrick. He wasn’t from Jerusalem, as he had insisted when Rafferty had questioned him. Actually, he was from Braintree. Diagnosed with schizophrenia in his late teens, Charlie’d had his share of run-ins with the law. But not since he was “saved.”

In a controversial ritual that Cal named “pharmacopeia exorcism,” mental patients were encouraged to throw their medications into the harbor. They then endured a purification ritual not unlike the kind that took place in a Native American sweat lodge. In his endless stealing of doctrine from other faiths, Cal had even called this ritual a vision quest. It seemed appropriate. After two days with no food and little water, not one of these former mental patients failed to have a vision of some sort. Likening it to his time lost at sea, Cal directed his followers to listen for the voice of God and let that voice direct their lives.

Among those women whose belief systems favored such things, there were three Virgin Marys and two Joans of Arc. The voices that Charlie Pedrick had heard during his own vision quest had informed him that he was the reincarnation of John the Baptist. Rafferty had been told about the ritual when he arrived in Salem, but he hadn’t really taken it seriously until he saw the orange prescription bottles floating in Salem Harbor one morning. He’d spent several hours fishing them out, then made his first arrest of Cal Boynton. For littering.

The two groups were in front of the casino now, and things were really heating up.

“Take your pagan idols and go home!” one of the Calvinists shouted.