Down on the beach, a few bathers were poking toes into the water. Other people lay sprawled in the sun, working on their tans. It was the only work anyone seemed devoted to. I knocked again. Under the sounds of a detergent commercial I heard a faint creak and a noise that sounded like slithering. Despite the warmth, a shiver went down my spine. I leaned close to peer through the screen and was startled to see somebody sitting in there, a foot from the screen. “Sorry,” I said, recovering. “Is this where Ted Rand lives?”
“Yes? What is it?” the person demanded through a rusty pipe. Man or woman, I couldn't tell.
“My name is Alex Rasmussen. I met Ted yesterday afternoon.”
The figure loomed nearer, coming into partial light, and I saw now that it was a woman. The rubber tires of her wheelchair bumped the screen door. “Teddy ain't here.”
Years of confinement had atrophied her. The flesh on her face sagged. Limp white hair danced around her head like a hula skirt. A thin sour odor came from within the house, despite the TV announcer's claims about springtime freshness. “Well, that's okay. Just tell himâ”
“He's dead.”
That stopped me. Images from Hitchcock rose in my mind. I stood staring through the screen at the fuzzy image, as if it too were just another plot twist. “You can come in if you want to.”
I didn't want to. Something about the sallow old woman sitting in her dark house with the TV at full volume unnerved me, made me want to run down the beach and plunge into the cold water, as if a contagion might exist in there, or worse: as if I might find the body of Ted Rand lying in the flickering light of a daytime rerun, seized in the grimace of a chest-clutching knife attack. But that was just heebie-jeebies. I'd seen Rand alive and well not twenty-four hours ago. I opened the screen door and stepped in. The woman rolled her chair backward. “Come on, I don't bite.” I followed her through a short entryway into a large kitchen full of modern appliances and felt rationality reassert itself. It wasn't the Bates Motel.
The old woman used a remote control and shut off the sound, leaving on the picture.
Bay Watch
. I dragged my eyes back to her. Her arms were puffy, with a lot of sunspots, giving the effect of nutmeg sprinkled on an egg custard that had cooled and curdled. Between the hem of a faded housedress and tattered slippers, burst veins mapped her lower legs. What did I expect? She looked ninety. Her eyes were the only things that seemed to have life in the pudding body. They met mine: sharp and wild as a hawk's. I gave my name.
“Huh?” she demanded.
I said it louder.
“There's coffee,” she said.
“No, thanks, I only wanted toâ”
“I just made it. Go on.”
It seemed to be a ticket for admission. I chose a sturdy white mug with a blue sailboat on the side and half-filled it. I gestured with the pot. She shook her head. “One cup a day's all I get anymore, and I drunk it already. I just like the smell. Pills are my potion these days.” I took in the counter and its bewildering array of medications in brown plastic vials. “Doctor says I've got a kidney stone the size of Plymouth Rock. He says he could blast it with some kind of beam, and I say no, sir. I don't want no beam inside me, and I sure don't want to pass it, neither.”
I set the cup aside. The sharp old eyes watched me. “You're a rough-looking thing,” the woman said. “You'd be about Teddy's age. Older, actually. You didn't go to school with him, did you?”
“Ted Rand?” I was confused.
“What?”
“No, I didn't go to school with him.”
“You know Teddy?”
Taking a new tack, I said, “There's a man and his daughter staying two houses down. Ben and Michelle Nickerson. Did you happen to meet them?”
“He was in that silly little war down in ⦠wherever it was. With the pineapple-face drug dealer.”
“Ben Nickerson was?”
“Noriega. Wasn't he the one?”
“I mean, was Ben Nickerson in the service?”
“Teddy. Did you play football with him?”
Back to that. “No,” I said.
The woman nodded, but I had my doubts she meant it. David Hasselhoff had rescued a young beauty in a thong and was giving her mouth-to-mouth; he seemed to be having a lot more fun at the beach than I was. Before I could rephrase my question, the old woman said, “Teddy's dead.” The tape loop was about to start again. Her mind was a time machine, with the lever set on yesterday. I sat a moment more, feeling the one gulp of coffee roil in my stomach, then I thanked her and got out of there. She called after me: “There's answers to our questions.”
I stopped and moved partway back. “Which questions, ma'am?”
She fixed me with her hawk stare. “All of them.”
As I walked back along the beach, I heard music coming from the rented house where I was staying. It sounded like the noise I'd heard yesterday morning on the CD player in Michelle Nickerson's bedroom. I climbed the deck steps on swift feet and slipped open the screen slider. Someone was in the house. There were keys and a pair of sunglasses on top of a large book on the counter that hadn't been there before. I went in. A woman was sitting at the table. It was Paula Jensen. She didn't hear me. In front of her was a portable CD player, and beside that the black satin Satan Bugg jacket. Becoming aware of me, she hopped up with a little cry and snapped off the CD player.
“I seem to make a habit of startling you,” I said.
“I didn't know where you were.” She reddened slightly. “Anything?”
“Not yet. Are you okay?” She looked a little frayed.
“I decided to drop off the missing persons form myself, then I came here. I was thinking the music might help me learn something.”
“Did it?”
“It gave me a headache. I'm too keyed up. I keep trying Michelle's
cell phone, but I get the âno service' message.”
“You said she turns it off.”
“I'm hoping that's what it is.”
“You want some aspirin?”
“It'll go away. I just want to know that my daughter is safe.”
We both sat down. “Is your husband okay with the missing persons report?”
“He just doesn't want us to be the couple on the six-o'clock news, looking like deer caught in the headlights of a truck.”
I nodded, but for reasons of my own. When a disappearance reached the level of TV news, it usually didn't bode well for anyone, though I didn't say this. “Chief Delcastro isn't likely to broadcast it.”
“What's your sense of him?” she asked. “Can he help?”
“He seems overprotective of his town. I feel like my pant cuffs get wet every time I talk to him. But he strikes me as efficient.” I nodded at the jacket. “Is that familiar?”
She drew it to her. “It's definitely Shel's. Ben got it for her in California.” I could hear a pull of hope in her words, counteracting the worry in her face. “Have you found anything else?”
I told her what I'd been doing. I wished it were more. When I'd told her about the pale old woman I'd just spoken with, she said, “Teddy Rand. Why's that familiar?” She thought a moment but shook her head. She took me up on the offer of a painkiller, and we found some Advil. Paula picked up the large book that lay on the counter. On the pebbled gray cover I read the name
The Torch
.
“It's Ben's high school yearbook. I had it in storage at home. I thought you might find it helpful.” She paged it open to a senior class portrait of Benjamin Nickerson. Dark, probing eyes peered out through wire-rim glasses, and wings of lank dark hair were parted over a studious brow. Paula stared at it too, as if it were a mirror that reflected the past. Nickerson's list of school activities was brief: key club, biology club and band. I tried to picture him a few years later courting a pretty college coed like Paula, but it was a stretch. Of course, I hadn't seen him in hip boots.
“The photo
is
dated,” she said.
“Even so, the book might point me to some people in town who would know him.”
“Oh, I hope so.” She gave me a grateful look, though I hadn't done much to earn it so far. I asked if she'd eaten yet, but she said she should be getting back home. “In case Shel calls there. And I need to be there when Katie gets home from camp.”
“How's her business plan for the lemonade stand coming?”
Her smile was welcome. “She's already done a spreadsheet.”
I walked her to the door. “By the wayâ” She pointed to the fishbowl on the table. “That's probably Ben's.”
“A seashell?”
“Come here.”
We bent to the bowl. Paula put her hand on my arm, a tender natural gesture, as we both peered close. “There,” she said excitedly, “see it?” Tiny pink claws appeared under the edge of the shell. “A hermit crab. It'll live in there until it outgrows the snail shell and has to find another.”
“It won't find many in there,” I said.
“Michelle will get one forâ” She broke off.
Her eyes swept mine for an instant, and they were frightened. I wondered if she was having one of her intuitions. Gently I gripped her shoulder. “Are you all right?” She made her face tight and nodded. “Will you be okay to drive?”
“I'm fine now, really.” And she did appear to pull herself together. “I was going to say that I bet Ben found this and gave it to her as a project. He can't resist teaching.” She smiled into my eyes for a moment, as if some bond was being strengthened between us. We walked outside together.
After she had gone, I locked up and went to my car. As I opened the door, I saw a little yellow sticky note on the window. “Wuz in the area. J” it read, written in green ink with a little smiley face. I puzzled that a moment but got no flash of inspiration. I pressed the note onto a page of my pocket notebook and drove back into town.
Â
Â
Delcastro had said that Standish jumps from four thousand year-round souls to three times that in the summer. A good number of
them appeared to be out and about as I parked near the center. Over at the town common a small ring of kids were kicking around a little leather sack, as I'd seen them doing yesterday. I wandered over and paused to watch. They were a slope-shouldered crew, with baggy clothes and sparse little goatees sprouting from their youthful chins. Several were wearing T-shirts with the names of rock bands on them. When their momentum broke, I asked about the game, and they said it was called Haki Sack. I showed them the photos of Michelle Nickerson, and they shook their heads, polite but not very curious about who she was or why I was asking. “What about night action?” I said. “Is there any place where you go to hang out?”
“The Beachcomber,” said one kid.
“Yeah,” another agreed, “the Beachcomber's a chill.”
“What is it?”
“An under-twenty-one club. It's on the coast road just outside town.” They gave me directions.
I thanked them. I started away, but then turned. “Resolve an issue for me. What's with Satan Bugg?”
“They bite,” one kid said at once.
“You bite,” another kid told him. “They're cool.”
“
Were
cool. They're teeny-bop music.”
“Well ⦠maybe.”
“They're definitely not Creed.”
“Or Tool,” said a third.
They started off on a riff about groups I'd never heard of. I waved thanks. The logical thing to do would be to buy a tape of the band and decide for myself. Unfortunately, the Ford's player had a cassette stuck in the deck from a previous owner. Honest Al had taken the car in trade the very day I got it, so I took it as is. I had no idea what the tape was, and I hadn't found time yet to get it surgically removed. But music wasn't my main concern right now.
Standish was terra incognita, but I had the sense that it was small enough that someone had to know something. Ben Nickerson wasn't a total outsider or a wash-ashore either. I set course for the Storm Warning. At the take-out window, people were getting fried clams and ice cream. As I ordered coffee, someone behind me said, “Hello again.”
It was the ubiquitous patrolman Ferry. He touched the visor of his baseball cap in an informal salute. “Can I buy you coffee?” I asked.
“No, sir, not necessary. We're well cared for here.”
The waitress, a pretty dark-haired woman of about thirty, whose name tag said “Fran,” smiled from under the yellow oilskin hat. “Don't be fooled by him,” she told me. “At the end of the month we send the department a bill.”
She bent to serve other customers, and I asked Ferry, “What can you tell me about Teddy Rand?”
“Not Ted?”
“Start with who's who.”
He tucked his traffic ticket pad into a compartment on his multipurpose belt, and we wandered over to a picnic table set up for the convenience of patrons. “They're father and son,” he explained. “Ted Rand is our number one citizen, I guess you could say. Not that anyone actually does, but it's true. He runs Point Pines Development.”
“That's his baby, huh?”
“He's very generous. Teddy's his son. TJ, they used to call him, for Ted, Junior I suppose.”
“Is Teddy Rand dead?” I was thinking of the old woman's mantra.
“Well, not literally. He was a great athlete at Standish High, and smart. He was supposed to go to the Ivy League; instead he joined the Marines and went down to Panama. When he got hurt, Mr. Rand and his wife took it really hard.”
“Is she the old woman that lives on the beach?”
“That'd be Mr. Rand's mother. Mr. Rand owns that house she's in. That's where he and his wife used to live. I think the shock of TJ getting wracked up did something to their marriage.”
“What happened to him?”
“TJ? I don't know the details. If you want the story, who to talk to is Chet Van Owen.”
I put the name in my notebook.
“He and TJ were tight. Big local jocksâthey were both
Patriot
Ledger
All-Scholastic in football. He's the one who got Teddy Rand messed up for good.”
That sobered me, and reminded me of what I was after. “Would Van Owen know Ben Nickerson?”
“The guy you're looking for?” Ferry lifted off his cap and scrubbed at his crew cut. “You got me there. Maybe, I guess. They'd be about the same age, and this was a small town then.”
“Where would I find this Van Owen?”
“You saw him yesterday. The guy who was surfing. Red Dog.” He glanced toward the common. “There won't be any waves today.”
“You can tell that?”
He pointed. “Flag.” It hung limp on the pole. “Plus some of those kids would be in the water if there was surf.”
“Is everyone around here a surfer?”
“It's hard to grow up here and not at least dabble. And that's where it ends with most of us. There're a lot of boards collecting dust in toolsheds and garages. Not Red Dog's, though. He's the best surfer around here ever. Hell of a football player, too,” Ferry said admiringly. “When he played linebacker he'd be all over the quarterback before he could set his fingers on the laces. But what he really loved was riding waves. He's good enough he could've made the California pro scene. You could check the sporting-goods store over at the Hanover Mallâhe works there sometimes.”
The walkie-talkie on Ferry's belt squawked, and he picked it up.
I glanced again toward the common and saw the small knots of kids hanging out. It seemed a lot less work than a job, or paddling a surfboard around in cold water. Ferry listened to a message about some debris reportedly in the road somewhere, and he said he would check it out. He belted his walkie-talkie.
“Last thing,” I said. “When you told me that Ted Rand has been generous, what did you mean?”
“Point Pines has made him a lot of money. The rec center across the common came from his donations. Some of the high-tech gear in the station, too. He even worked out something with the dealership that supplies his company with vehicles, and they donate the Crown Vics.”
As if on cue, one of the new Fords rolled to a stop at the curb.
A shaggy-haired, square-jawed cop sat at the wheel. The sunlight hitting his mirror sunglasses made them gleam like headlights. From the passenger side, Vin Delcastro got out. Ferry, whose back was to the curb and hadn't seen them arrive, turned now as the door closed. Seeing the chief, he hopped to his feet.
“You like hanging around, enjoying yourself, officer?” Delcastro said. “Want me to get you some ice cream?”
Ferry flushed under his tan.
“My fault, Chief,” I said. “I was bracing him.”
“I should've guessed. Go on,” he told Ferry, who sputtered apologies and moved off to resume his foot beat. To me, Delcastro said, “You find out what you need to know?”
“Little by little.”
“Well, Mrs. Jensen dropped off a missing persons report, so I guess we'll be doing your job for free. You can collect your bill and go on back to Lawrence.”
“Lowell,” I said.
“Show me the difference. Big dead cities on a big dead river.”
He was goading me; it was part of the territorial thing. I didn't snarl. “Can I buy you a latte?” I asked.