Fall from Grace (13 page)

“More to my mother. I guess you heard about the will.”

“Oh, yeah.” The words were weighted with significance. “We’ve heard.”

“I guess everyone has,” Adam said resignedly. “How has it been working with the state police?”

“About what you’d expect. They send over this sergeant named Mallory—thinks he’s a hotshot and that cops on this island are all buffoons. Not that he says that. It’s more the way he’s so patient and polite. Like when I was talking to Grandma after she got Alzheimer’s.”

Adam had to laugh. “From now on, Bobby, I’ll speak very slowly and distinctly.”

Bobby’s grin was rueful. “It really is like that, you know.”

“So how long do you have to put up with these guys?”

“As long as they keep digging.”

Adam shook his head. “I can’t believe that anyone killed him. I don’t know why they’d think so.”

“Well, they do.” Bobby looked away, then into Adam’s face. “Is anyone in your family getting legal advice?”

Adam feigned surprise. “They’ve got no reason to lawyer up. What with the will, they can’t afford to anyhow.”

Bobby stared at his beer. “Maybe they should try,” he said in a flatter tone. “I know where they can get a second mortgage.”

“Not on a house that belongs to Carla Pacelli. I’m the only one with money, and not much at that.” Adam paused, then asked quietly, “How much should I worry about them, Bob?”

Bobby considered his answer. “All I can tell you,” he said in a lower voice, “is there’s a problem with the autopsy report.”

“What kind of problem?”

For what seemed to Adam a painfully long time, Bobby concealed his thoughts behind half-closed eyelids. “How close are you to your brother, Adam?”

With difficulty, Adam summoned a look of composure, maintaining the same puzzled tone. “Teddy? We used to be very close.”

Bobby seemed to inhale. “If you still are, you might ask him the last time he was at the promontory. Depending on how you like the answer, tell him to get a lawyer—”

“Bobby,” Adam interrupted, “I know my brother. He hated that place.”

“So he says. Problem is, he also hated your father.”

“No more than I did.”

Bobby shook his head. “Maybe so. But Teddy stuck around.” Pausing, he glanced at the nearest table, then continued speaking under the din. “Might as well tell you what Teddy already knows. Your brother used to have a boyfriend on the island, and Sean Mallory went to see him. Seems like Teddy used to fantasize about giving your dad a shove, then watching him hit the rocks headfirst. Pillow talk, I guess.”

Adam’s skin went cold, and then a memory pierced his consciousness. The brothers had set up an old army tent to camp in the backyard. Teddy was twelve, Adam ten—the evening before, Teddy had refused to join the family picnic at the promontory, and Ben had mocked his fear of heights. “I guess you’re made for sea level,” their father had concluded. “A metaphor of sorts.” Lying in the tent, Teddy repeated this, then said, “Loves those sunsets, doesn’t he?”

“Yeah.”

“Ever think about pushing him off that cliff?”

Teddy’s tone of inquiry unsettled Adam badly. All at once, he felt the difference between them, the line of demarcation that was their father. “Not really, no.”

“Because I do, all the time. Sometimes it feels like the bastard is choking me to death—”

Facing Bobby, Adam shook his head, as if to clear it. “That sounds like something a kid would say. Even at that, it doesn’t sound like Teddy.”

“People grow up,” Bobby rejoined, “get serious about life. Maybe there’s a lot he hasn’t told you. Like that he called his ex-boyfriend the night your father died, leaving a message that he needed to talk.”

“About what?”

“The message didn’t say. But your brother sounded desperate, almost out of his mind. Not like I remember him from high school, this kind of gentle guy.” Bobby stopped to stare at him. “You don’t know anything about this, do you?”

“No,” Adam conceded. “Nothing.”

“That’s pretty interesting, don’t you think? Anyhow, I’ve made my point, and said way too much to do it. But ask yourself which neighbor of yours likes to walk that trail after dinner.”

Adam searched his memory. “Nathan Wright used to.”

“Tell Teddy to see a lawyer,” Bobby repeated. “That’s all I have to say. If you want to talk about old times, I’m happy to stick around. Or you can tell me about what you’ve been up to.”

Bobby’s misgivings were palpable, and in his last words Adam heard a plea—Help me make this a night with an old friend. “Then let’s switch to whisky, Bob, and do it right.”

For the next few moments, waiting for two glasses of Maker’s Mark on ice, Adam spun stories about Afghanistan—in his telling a strange and exotic place in which Adam was a seriocomic bit player. Over one whisky, then another, they began reprising the Nantucket game, recalling key moments in a night that made them champions of their league. “You know,” Bobby said in a thicker voice, “my dad always said that next to Ben Blaine, you were the best quarterback we ever had.”

Adam laughed briefly. “Funny, Bob. My dad said that, too.”

At length, they got up, with Adam leaving crumpled bills on the table. Outside it had rained; the night air had cooled, and shallow pockets of water glistened on the asphalt. The two men embraced, and then drew back, looking into each other’s faces.

“Good luck with Barbara,” Adam said. “I hope it all works out.”

Bobby’s shoulders slumped. “Me too,” he murmured. “I always wanted kids, you know.”

“So did I,” Adam replied, and realized that this was true. “A family of my own, where I made things turn out better.”

Bobby looked up again. “Ask Teddy about the insurance policy,” he said, and walked unsteadily toward his car.

Four

The next morning brought a dark, lowering sky, clouds heavy with incipient rain. Shortly before nine, Adam met Sergeant Sean Mallory at the promontory overlooking where Benjamin Blaine had fallen to his death.

Though Mallory was accompanied by another plainclothes cop—a stocky, dark-haired woman named Meg Farrell—Adam focused on her superior. Mallory was perhaps forty, with a graying crew cut, bleak blue eyes, and a long face made for tragedy, accented by a quiet, somewhat monotonal voice and an air of watchful patience. He reminded Adam of a priest in the confessional, prepared to hear the worst. In Afghanistan, he had learned to make swift judgments about men whose lives were foreign to him, knowing that an error could mean his own death. Now he assessed Sean Mallory. A dangerous man, he guessed. His one advantage was that Mallory did not know what Adam knew.

“Thanks for meeting with us,” the sergeant said. “Though I’m curious about why you wanted it to be here.”

“I have some questions of my own. I thought this place might bring them into focus.”

Mallory nodded, then asked, “You were in Afghanistan when he died, I understand.”

“That’s right.”

“Mind telling me what you do there?”

Standing to one side, Farrell began scribbling notes. “I’m an agricultural consultant,” Adam replied, “with an outfit called Agracon.” Before Mallory could continue, he said, “You’ve been looking into my father’s death for a while, Sergeant. I’m interested in why.”

Mallory’s eyes betrayed a hint of surprise. “I’m sure you know we can’t answer your question.”

Adam cocked his head. “No law against it, Sergeant. After all, I don’t have to tell you anything either. Given that you’ve interrogated members of my family, it’s fair to ask the premise.”

Mallory held his gaze, his tone level but ungiving. “Once I tell you something, I can’t know what you might let slip, and to whom. It’s simply human nature.”

Especially since you suspect my brother, Adam thought. “I’m not asking for a list of suspects,” he replied. “But before we go any further, I’d like to hear why you suspect that someone pushed my father off this cliff. As his son, and executor of his will, I have good reason to ask.”

Adam watched the calculation in Mallory’s eyes. “There are certain things,” the sergeant allowed in the same polite tone, “we’re still trying to clear up. Maybe they mean one thing, maybe another. Take one example I mentioned to your family—a button on your father’s shirt was missing. Maybe he lost it in the fall. If so, we’d expect to find it on the beach. But if we found it up here, it might suggest he lost it in a struggle. Problem is, we can’t find it at all. It leaves you wondering.”

“Not unless you suspect someone of killing him.”

Almost imperceptibly, Mallory’s face became more stony. “We’re keeping an open mind, Mr. Blaine.”

“Adam, please. Mr. Blaine is dead.”

Mallory ignored this. “On that subject, how was your relationship with him?”

“Distant, I’d say. At least in the sense that we haven’t spoken since 2001. It helped preserve our relationship.”

Farrell looked up from her notepad. A brief glint appeared in Mallory’s eyes, the trace of a smile. “Why did you find that necessary?”

“I found it preferable,” Adam replied calmly. “As to my reasons, I don’t know why that’s relevant. After all, I was in Afghanistan when Jack found him on the rocks. That leaves everyone else on this island a potential suspect, it seems. Including, incongruously, the members of my family. And, far less incongruously, Carla Pacelli.”

Mallory did not respond; it was as though he had not heard. “Tell me about Jenny Leigh,” he said abruptly.

For a split second, Adam hesitated. “What’s to tell?”

“You were close to her once, I understand. You must know why your father left her a million dollars.”

“Another mystery, Sergeant. After I left the island, it seems, my mother and Jenny became friends. Jenny is an aspiring writer. Maybe that’s what motivated him—a random act of kindness. That happened on occasion—”

“Do you think your father may have had a more intimate relationship with her?”

Adam emitted a bark of laughter. “Like with Carla? Beats me, though I wouldn’t put it past him. Still, I never heard that, and there’s only so much a dying man can do—”

“He wasn’t dying all his life, Mr. Blaine.”

“We all are,” Adam said easily, “if you care to get philosophical. But I take your point. In the last ten years, I haven’t spoken to anyone on this island save my mother, Jack, and Teddy. Except at the funeral, I haven’t seen Jenny in a decade. Better to ask her. Which I assume you have.

“As to the members of my family, I kept up with them through phone calls, emails, and occasional meetings off-island. If they knew what my father had done with this will, I’m sure any or all would have told me. None did.”

Mallory met his eyes. “So why do you distinguish them from Carla Pacelli? In their minds, like hers, your mother stood to profit from his death.”

And by extension, Adam thought, Teddy. He considered anew that Teddy or his mother could have feared that Ben would change the will, not knowing that he had already done so. “If they didn’t know about the will,” he parried, “why worry? And if they did, pushing my father off this promontory would be the dumbest thing they could do—a favor to Pacelli.”

From his expression, Mallory had processed all this long ago, parsing the alternatives based on whatever pieces he was missing. Above the gray waters behind him, Adam noticed, the clouds were blacker, closer. Abruptly, Mallory asked, “How did you learn he’d died?”

Recalling his own reaction to the astonishing news—a sudden, surprising inability to speak—Adam was acutely aware of Farrell taking notes, watching him as she did. “My mother called me, in Kandahar.”

“Did she say anything about the will?”

“Nothing.”

“But she knew at that point, yes?”

“I doubt it. As I understand it, she called within hours of Jack finding his body. She was still in shock—she could barely find the words to tell me, and her voice broke when she did. I can’t imagine his estate plan was foremost in her mind.”

“Before that,” Mallory prodded, “when was the last time you spoke to any member of your family?”

“Perhaps three weeks ago. Actually, it was an email from Teddy, exclusively focused on how I was doing. He can’t imagine why I chose to work there, and he worries too much.”

Saying this, Adam grasped Mallory’s point—between the email and their father’s death, Teddy could have divined something about Ben’s intentions, and taken out his fear and anger on a weakened man. As if to confirm this, Mallory asked coolly, “What was Teddy’s relationship to your father?”

You might ask him, Bobby Towle had advised, the last time he was at the promontory. Looking Mallory in the face, Adam asked, “How much do you understand about Benjamin Blaine?”

“Not as much as you, Mr. Blaine. But that wasn’t my question.”

“Then maybe it should be,” Adam retorted. “So here goes. My father was brilliant, immensely talented, extremely driven, and capable of great charm and generosity. He was also vain, self-centered, and the focus of his own world. Other people weren’t real to him, simply props in the drama of Benjamin Blaine.” Adam softened his voice. “Nonetheless, my mother spent a lifetime loving him. And so, despite their differences, did Teddy.

“He wasn’t an easy father. With both of us, he was frequently demanding, and not uncommonly demeaning. There were times when we resented him bitterly, and Teddy had a more extravagant way of expressing that. But except in words, Teddy is the least violent man I know.” Adam looked from Mallory at Farrell, waving a hand to indicate the promontory. “Not to mention that he’s afraid of heights. He’d come here from time to time, but it was never his favorite place, and he never lingered. And Teddy also feared our father. I didn’t. If you’re looking for a family member who’d have pushed him off this cliff, I’d be the one.”

Mallory stared at him. “And you know all of that remained true,” he inquired more skeptically, “even though you weren’t here?”

Teddy had left a footprint, Adam guessed, or Nathan Wright had seen him near the promontory on the night their father died. “True, I wasn’t around. But you’re asking me to imagine a different man. I’ve spent time with Teddy now, and he’s the same. Are you familiar with Occam’s razor?”

The sharp look Mallory gave him reminded Adam of a bird. “That the simplest explanation is the best.”