“If I just what? Start an investigation of a woman who has dedicated herlifeto public service? With no proof except some accusations from the man who we still have been unable to clear?” He sat back with a sneer and a little laugh, folded his arms over hisstomach. “You’re a smart one, I’ll give you that, Mr. Plummer. Probably watch a lot ofDateline. Fault of this whole era, thinking they can run one over on the police.”
Denny only wanted what any husband would want, what he thought Sticks wanted, though now he wasn’t so sure: to find resolution, to finish what had been started, to solve the crime. Anna had always played this stupid song that he hated, over and over again when she had been sad or when she had been stuck on a copywriting assignment that she couldn’t get through. He had never understood why listening to the same thing over and over again had helped her over a hump, but now he kind of got it, that she had found new meaning every different time.
Standing at opposite sides / Equal partners in a mystery
But where was his partner in this mystery? Gone, surely gone. If she were here, what would she say, anyway? This was part of the problem. He hadn’t really been listening when she was around, and now she wasn’t here to share in the thrill of the chase.
“That wasn’t my point in any of this,” Denny said. “I just think you go as far as you can with every possibility. I think you take every lead to its natural conclusion, and this is a real lead. I looked at Anna’s computer, I brought it all to you, and you have done nothing, said nothing.”
“We didn’t feel that anything on there was sufficient to pursue,” the officer said.
“‘Sufficient to pursue’! ‘Sufficient to pursue’! You said that to me before,” Denny said, slamming a palm on the Formica table. “You practically stalked me until I came down to the station, made me feel like I was a suspect . . . then I guess that didn’t work out for you, right? Then I gave you all these emails, all these threats, and then there was proof that she met with—guess who!—Mimi Mar, that she had an issue with one person in all of godforsaken Hamilton, that she reached out to people about it, that people knew, and you are telling me, well, no, no one’s gonna do one goddamned thing aboutit. You might as well just tell me that you have no plans to find out who did this to my wife, because finding out who did this might open a can of worms that you don’t want to open.”
Denny had a moment of temporary recognition. He thought of the surveillance cars that had stalked his house in the weeks following his wife’s death, about the feeling he had back then, that the cops were trying to convince him to stop meddling, about how he had disregarded it. But what if he had been right? What if the police were trying to make him go away? What if the cops were still trying to make him go away? And if they were, why?
“I’d be careful with what you say, Mr. Plummer. I don’t appreciate your tone,” Sticks said. He was standing now, loosening a tightly impacted wallet from his back pocket. He extracted a wad of dollar bills and tossed them on the table. “I think we’re done for today. I suggest cooling off a little. Go for a swim in that pool of yours. Take your kids over to Hodgie’s. Whatever you gotta do to get this out of your system.” Grabbing his police-issued cap from the hook that hung above the booth, he tipped his head, turned on his heel, and walked out, leaving Denny alone in the Agawam, Anna’s intemperate rage coursing through his veins.
Chapter 15
FOR A WHILE,things returned to their natural order. Anna took the kids to play mini golf up at Captain’s Corner, in Salisbury, where Ben showed off his natural athletic ability. Afterward, they went across the road to Hodgie’s Too and ordered lime and watermelon sherbet freezes, ice-cold drinks fizzy with seltzer. They sat in the sun and watched people eating tall and drippy cones while they got swarmed by yellow jackets.
At dinner, when Denny was done with work, the four of them drove out along 133 to Essex to eat at Woodman’s, a yearly tradition. They sat in the restaurant’s ancient wooden booths and ordered whole steamed lobsters with drawn butter and, of course, fried clams with extra tartar sauce, and even Louisa, the pickiest eater of all, who always ordered a hot dog at seafood restaurants, tasted the plate of steamer clams that came piping hot and served with a cup of “broth,” which was really just hot seawater, as Anna saw it.
Another day, they drove out to Crane’s, Anna digging into her purse and forking over the painful forty-dollar entrance fee forthe beach, hauling out a rolling Yeti cooler filled with drinks and sandwiches—tomato for her, peanut butter and jelly for the kids—until they were bored with her and with the too-cold water and the too-hot sand, and so she had to do the entire thing in reverse, backtracking through the sand, through the parking lot, her whole life a tape played back in the opposite direction. Then it was a stop at Russell Orchards, this time for tender apricots and green compostable quarts of blueberries, which she allowed the kids to eat in the car, even though she knew she would find shriveled berries under the seats for the next six months.
A typical New England summer, which was all she ever really wanted anyway. It had been the reason she came home, the reason she had pleaded with Denny to move back, all of these sweet things, these memories she would share with her kids and hold on to forever. The beach and the fruit and even the Yeti back and forth on the sand. And she loved every minute of it.
Anna had just about forgotten about Mimi Mar and the pool at Life Time and the letter she had sent to the superintendent. A month had passed. It was mid-July, past the official start to summer. The weather had been cooperative and hot since well before Memorial Day, though she had stopped visiting the health club, had stopped putting herself in the path of any of the usual Hamilton suspects, especially since when shedidrun into any of them, they gave her the cold shoulder. Even sweet Ellen Wilson had been cold as ice the last time she saw her, at the Citgo over on Bay Road.
She drove over to Di’s house right after that happened and sat in the driveway until her friend came out.
“What’s up?” Di asked, walking out to the car. “You just planning on sitting here forever?”
Anna had the radio on and the sunroof open. “I’m just sitting here feeling sorry for myself,” she said. The only thing that would make it better, she thought, was a pack of Parliament Lights, and,just like magic, Di opened her hand,et voilà:two cigarettes that might as well have come straight from 1998.
“I come bearing gifts, of course,” Di said. “But you have to tell me why you’re sitting in my driveway listening to Garbage with the sunroof open.”
“I ran into Ellen Wilson at Citgo.”
“Big fucking deal. Hamilton’s the size of my ass. Which, as you know, is not that big.” She put both cigarettes in her mouth and lit them both, before passing one to Anna.
Anna accepted it, looking at the burning ember in wonder. It had been a very long time.
“She wouldn’t even make eye contact with me,” Anna said.
“I didn’t realize you were actually close,” Di said. She turned her mouth into a wide O and blew smoke rings, an old and faded party trick that never really lost its shimmer.
“It’s not that we were close, but she was always nice to me.”
“I’ll tell you a thing about Ellen Wilson. I’ve never met a person so afraid of fucking up in my whole life,” Di said.
“What is that supposed to mean?”
“It means that Ellen’s entire life revolves around what the members of the PTO think about her, and if you take that away, I swear to God she would die a slow and painful death right in front of you. She’s cold to you because her Hamilton life depends on it. She practically doesn’t exist without Mimi and Karen.”
“That’s the most pathetic thing I have ever heard,” Anna said, because it was.
“I don’t make the rules, I just loosely obey them,” Di said.
