“Very poetic.”
“Then boom, the horse and cart are blown to bits. It’s mayhem, dead bodies everywhere, rubble, shrapnel. Right on Wall Street. Nineteen twenty. Two hundred people were wounded. Forty killed. Not including old J.P. himself, I might add. He was the intended target, but he was in Scotland at the time.”
Don Falke had humored him long enough. “Where are you going with this, Mitch?”
“The car bomb was invented by one lone, ignorant immigrant with a grudge against rich Wall Street bankers.”
“So?”
“So it was a hundred-odd years ago, but the principle’s the same. Why does this have to be Mafia? Any idiot with a grudge could have strapped some Semtex to that car. Some fruit loop might have linked Maria in his addled brain with Quorum or Lenny Brookstein.”
Don Falke laughed. “Dubray’s right. You are obsessed. This doesn’t have a fuckin’ thing to do with Lenny Brookstein, okay? I think you need to go and lie down.”
“I want to interview Andrew Preston.”
Donald Falke finally lost his temper. “Over my dead body. Now you listen to me, Connors. Stay the fuck away from my case. I’m serious.”
“Why, Don? Are you worried I might uncover something inconvenient?”
“If I hear you’ve been within ten miles of Andrew Preston, I’m going to go to Dubray and he is going to fire your ass. Drop it.”
Drop it. Mitch was starting to feel like a naughty Labrador retriever with his jaws around some other dog’s stick. He left Donald Falke’s office and walked straight to his car.
IT HAD BEEN A MONTH SINCE Mitch last visited the Prestons’ midtown apartment. He remembered it as an expensive piece of real estate, an enormous five-bedroom pad in a tony, well-maintained building. But what had struck him most about it was how little it struck him. Everything about Andrew and Maria’s home was bland, from the nondescript street outside to the dutifully tasteful cream-and-brown decor inside. Mitch couldn’t imagine having that much money to spend and wasting it on something so safe. Maria Preston had been an irritating woman. Mitch loathed drama queens. But at least she’d had some color to her. Some life. She must have felt entombed in that apartment. As if she’d been cut and pasted into a page from the Pottery Barn catalog, laminated for all eternity onto a cream B&B Italia sofa and left there to rot.
Turning onto the Prestons’ block, Mitch slowed. Uniformed beat cops were in the process of having the street cordoned off. Mitch pulled up at the same time as two ambulances and a fleet of squad cars.
“What’s with the circus? What’s going on?” He flashed his badge.
“It’s Maria Preston’s husband, sir.”
“What about him?”
“Looks like he hanged himself, sir. About an hour ago. They’re cutting him down now.”
THIRTY
UPSTAIRS, PARAMEDICS LEANED OVER ANDREW PRESTON’S body, pumping the chest. Mitch could tell instantly that it was hopeless. They were just going through the motions.
“Crime-scene guys got here yet?”
One of the medics shook his head. “You’re the first. Detective Falke is on his way.”
“Any note?”
“Yeah. Through there.”
The medic gestured toward the living room. The window was open. On the tasteful oak coffee table, between the two tasteful beige suede armchairs, a piece of paper fluttered in the breeze, pinned down by a heavy glass ashtray. Without bothering to put on gloves, Mitch moved the ashtray and picked it up. In neat, cursive handwriting, Andrew Preston had written seven words.
It was my fault. Forgive me, Maria.
“What the FUCK are you DOING?”
Mitch jumped, dropping the note. Detective Lieutenant Dubray’s voice boomed off the walls like an angry giant’s. “Are you out of your mind?”
Mitch opened his mouth to explain himself, then closed it again. What could he say? He knew he shouldn’t be here. Still less should he be messing with another detective’s crime scene. Dubray was incandescent with rage.
“That’s evidence tampering! Do you understand how serious that is? I could have you thrown off the force. I should have you thrown off the force.”
“I’m sorry. I needed to talk to Andrew Preston.”
“You’re a little late for that.”
“Yeah. So I see. Look, sir, I would have waited for Falke, but I knew he’d be obstructive. He probably wouldn’t even have let me see the note.”
“Of course he wouldn’t! And why the fuck should he? This is not your case, Mitch.”
“But, sir, he’s not even asking the obvious questions. Like what was Maria Preston doing in Sag Harbor anyway. And who knew she was gonna be there.”
“Don called me half an hour ago. He told me you were poking your nose in, rambling about Lenny goddamn Brookstein. He thinks you’ve lost it…”
“Oh, come on, sir. You know Don Falke’s always had it in for me.”
“I think you’ve lost it, too. I’m sorry, Mitch. But you’ve gone too far this time. You’re on suspension until further notice.”
“Sir!”
“Consider yourself on indefinite leave until you hear from me otherwise. And don’t look so goddamn hard done by. You’re lucky you aren’t fired. If I didn’t know how much Helen and Celeste count on that paycheck, I wouldn’t think twice. Now get out of here, before I change my mind.”
ON HIS WAY HOME, MITCH PASSED the bar where he’d first met with Davey Buccola. He went inside and ordered a scotch. “Keep ’em coming,” he told the barman.
“Bad day?”
Mitch shrugged. Bad year. Bad life. Part of him wished he had never laid eyes on Davey Buccola. If it hadn’t been for Davey’s ferretlike digging into Lenny Brookstein’s death, none of this would have happened. Mitch would have arrested Grace and been done with it. Moved on to the next case, like everyone wanted him to. Maybe even made captain.
Instead, here he was, alone, suspended from duty, all because of Buccola’s file and the promise he’d made Grace. Grace. Mitch wondered again where she was. No one would tell him anything. He imagined her being interrogated, locked in solitary confinement, sleep-deprived. He thought about her sad eyes, her courage, her surprising sense of humor, even in the direst of situations, and hoped her spirit hadn’t already been broken.
Through the whiskey haze, Grace’s words floated back to him.
Forget about me.
It was much too late for that. Mitch realized that in the last two months, he’d barely thought about Helen. Grace had taken her place in his subconscious, his dreams. Now it was Grace he was letting down, Grace he was failing. Just as he’d failed Helen and Celeste. Just as he’d failed his father. I’ve disappointed everyone I ever loved. I let them all down.
Fuck suspension. Fuck toeing the line. And fuck giving up.
Tomorrow Mitch would take a flight to Nantucket Island.
The truth couldn’t wait.
THIRTY-ONE
MITCH COULDN’T UNDERSTAND IT.
You have all the money in the world. You can go anywhere you like—Miami Beach, Barbados, Hawaii, Paris. Why the hell would you buy a house in this dump?
Clearly, Lenny Brookstein didn’t have the best judgment in the world. He’d had a beautiful wife who adored him, but had chosen to shack up with an ugly mistress who loathed him. His so-called friends were about as trustworthy as a bunch of used car salesmen. But this took the cake. As far as Mitch could see, Nantucket had nothing to recommend it. With its gray, clapboard houses and rain-swept, desolate beaches, it was the sort of place that could make anyone depressed.
“What do people do here?” he asked the pharmacist at Congdon’s on Main Street, one of the few stores that kept its doors open off-season.
“Some people paint. Or write.”
Write what? Suicide notes? Leonard Cohen lyrics?
“Some people fish. It’s pretty quiet in March.”
This was an understatement. The guesthouse in Union Street where Mitch was staying was as silent as the grave. The only noise in the evenings was the heavy tick, tick of an antique grandfather clock in the parlor. A couple more weeks of this and Mitch would end up like the Jack Nicholson character in The Shining.
But it wouldn’t take two weeks. Within twenty-four hours of his arrival, word went around the island that a strange guy was in town, asking questions about Leonard Brookstein. Instinctively, collectively, the islanders clammed up. Felicia Torrez, Grace and Lenny’s cook up at the Cliff Road estate, now worked at Company of the Cauldron, the only high-end restaurant that catered to locals outside of the summer months. Mitch went to find her there.
“I’m trying to get a clearer picture of the events in the days leading up to the storm, back in the summer of 2009. You were living at the Brooksteins’ home at that time?”
Silence.
“How long had you been in their employ?”
More silence.
“Look, ma’am, this is not an official investigation, okay? You don’t need to be nervous. Did you notice any tension among any of the houseguests that particular weekend?”