“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.”
Adam nodded. “That night my father was drunk, weakened, and very sick. Maybe he fell. Maybe he jumped-he was a dead man, regardless, and must have known it. Take your pick, Sergeant. Instead, you’re questioning my family about a hypothetical murder that is medically superfluous.” For a moment Adam stopped, gauging the impression he intended to make on Sean Mallory, one false, one true: that he could lose control of his emotions, speaking without thought; and that he would make a compelling character witness for his brother. “One more thing,” he continued, “before you decide that this was murder, and focus on Teddy or my mother. Considering the will-which is the sole motive you’ve got-only Carla Pacelli and Jenny Leigh stood to profit from my father’s death. There’s no way Pacelli didn’t know she was in the will. She’s the one who gained the most by giving him a shove, and it seems my mother saw her with him, in this very spot.
“But there’s something else. My father was a dying man-emotional, erratic, and drinking heavily. He was fully capable of waking up and realizing that my mother deserved better than disinheritance. She’d never done a thing to him but be a loyal wife and mother. Pacelli must have known that, too. Why take the chance he’d change his mind? Only when he went off this cliff did that become impossible.” Adam paused again, concluding evenly and slowly, “Too many suspects, too few reasons to settle on Mom or Teddy. But I’m sure you’ve thought of that.”
Mallory had, Adam perceived at once-that was why he had not arrested anyone. But he also knew things about Teddy that Adam did not. All I can tell you, Bobby had said, is there’s a problem with the autopsy report. Adam needed to find out what it was.
He felt Mallory watching him. “Thank you,” the sergeant said coldly. “You’ve been very helpful.”
A dangerous man, Adam was now certain.
Five
Within an hour, the rain swept in from the Atlantic, heavy drops pelting the roof of Ben’s house with an arrhythmic crackle that, to Adam, sounded like gunfire. He stayed in his room, calling five men and two women he needed to meet with, then scoured the internet for information about Carla Pacelli. From his window he could see the guesthouse. Now and then, he imagined Teddy painting, enveloped in the gloom of his darkened skylight, trying to lose himself in some haunting image of the Vineyard. But Adam did not seek him out. It was not yet time.
In late afternoon, the storm passed. On impulse, Adam drove to Menemsha, parking near the wooden catwalk off the dock. The small fishing village was filled with tourists shopping for curios and crowding the fish markets in search of bass or salmon or lobster. Near the end of the dock the vast sweep of Menemsha Pond narrowed to meet the ocean. Here Ben Blaine had moored his Herreshoff. To Adam, the trim wooden craft, still perfectly maintained, had an orphaned quality. Against his will, he saw his father at the helm again, tensile and alert as he sailed into a headwind from that summer ten years before. But Jack’s sailboat, its near twin, had vanished from the water. Perhaps Jack had sold his. Yet Adam could still feel its tiller in his hand.
Paralyzed by memory, Adam stood there, the present erased by a sparkling day in August, an image of white sails racing to catch the wind. An hour passed, Adam half-aware of the smell of sea and salt and fish, so familiar from his past. As evening fell, he drove home, still avoiding his mother and brother, and set out from the promontory toward Nathan Wright’s old farmhouse.
As arranged, the two men met where the dirt path from Nathan’s place intersected with the trail along the cliff. Walking back toward the promontory, they spent the first few minutes catching up. Nate was from an old Vineyard family, the last of the property owners along the bluff who had not sold his land to summer people. A fisherman like Ben’s father, he was close to seventy, the years showing in his thinning hair and weathered face, the mica stubble on his chin. In the years since Adam had left, he learned, Nate’s wife had died, his four children had moved off-island. “Pretty soon,” he told Adam, “I’ll sell the property for as much as I can get. No doubt to some newcomer half my age, investment banker maybe, so I can put some of it in trust for the grandkids’ educations. It’s the way of things nowadays.”
The laconic, faintly bitter coda made Adam sad. “Where will you go?”
“Maybe live with my middle son, the one with the most children. Keep me young, I hope. Gets lonely here with no one.” As they reached the promontory, Nathan turned to Adam, hands in his pockets. “Times change. Only the rich can keep up with them. Or a smart man like your father.”
Even Nate’s voice sounded weathered, Adam thought, wearing away like the rest of him. “He wasn’t so smart at the end, Nate.”
Nate gave a grudging nod. “Maybe not. I don’t hold with what he did to Clarice, the soul of kindness ever since she was a girl. Though I’ve got to say, having met Ben’s girlfriend along this very trail, taken on her own she didn’t seem so bad. Not flashy like I expected.”
Adam gazed out at the horizon, backlit by orange rays of sun breaking through low white clouds. “So I hear,” he responded. “But an actress can play anyone. As matters stand, she’s about to become your neighbor.”