Bound by Mystery Page 11

  I decided to develop that angle and rework the stories into a novel. That was in 2004. A couple of years later I had a book called Owners, and got an agent for it. He put the book up for auction, but it didn’t sell. His parting advice was to write another book with the same setting and characters, but more focus on plot, so I did. The novel Locals became my MFA creative thesis.

  The agent had passed along the publishers’ e-mails, but there was one missing, from the “small but respected” house that might be a “good fallback choice.” I checked the company website, saw that agents were not required, and first-time unpublished writers were preferred. So I sent Locals to Poisoned Pen Press.

  Eight months later I got an e-mail about Locals from Annette Rogers, an acquisitions editor. She told me they had never read Owners because they only read exclusive submissions. I was thrilled at the e-mail, and annoyed at my ex-agent, who hadn’t bothered to research the submission policies of the companies where he submitted my work.

  I called Annette, we talked, I agreed to put “Nantucket” into the titles, and the rest is history—my personal history.

  Finishing my fourth book, I still can’t believe my luck. I still cringe when I get Annette’s editorial letters, I still crow when I see the books on a bookstore shelf. It took a long time to get here, but I’m happy and grateful that I finally arrived.

  —S.A.

  ***

  Mike Henderson was in trouble again.

  His brushes with the law had never amounted to much—in fact, they had become a small private joke between us. There was the time he managed to give himself the best possible motive and no alibi for the most notorious murder in the island’s history, or the time he was seen walking away from a murder scene with what looked like blood all over his hands. He was cleared both times—coincidence and paint.

  But this was different. This was serious.

  Five customers had filed theft reports on houses where Mike had been working over the winter. They’d arrived for the summer season, opened their houses, and found things missing. The five lists together made an impressive inventory: Tiffany silver, Reyes lightship baskets, a stash of Kruggerands. And there was a startling amount of original art gone missing: Rauschenberg collages, Jim Dine hearts, Hockney swimming pools, along with several pieces of Stickley furniture, and collections of Staffordshire dogs and Rookwood pottery.

  “This is no smash-and-grab break-in artist,” Haden Krakauer said after I finished going through the missing property lists. My assistant chief was shrewd and cynical and he knew the island much better than I. He grew up on Nantucket and knew everyone and their families and their family scandals going back three generations. “This is a connoisseur. These robberies were curated.”

  “So ignore the usual suspects?”

  “Well…”

  Neither of us wanted to be accused of profiling but the fact remained that most of the house robberies on the island were committed either by drunk high school kids who had the alarm codes or by desperate immigrants trying to keep up with the rent, the food prices, or a shiny new all-American opioid addiction. It could be a landscaper from Jamaica, a mason’s apprentice from Ecuador, a bus boy from Belarus—single or married, with kids or without. But those thefts all had a common accent, a familiar grammar—like English spoken badly. Those thieves stole bling and electronics—Apple watches and Xbox systems, flat screens and costume jewelry. Lots of fake diamond rings and pearl necklaces, along with the occasional valuable item, because they didn’t know the difference.

  This guy knew the difference. This was an educated, discerning thief who had access to the most well-guarded and expensively alarmed houses on the island. Which narrowed things down drastically—that was what Haden meant.

  “I need the next list,” I told him. “The list with the names of everyone who worked on those houses over the winter. Put Kyle Donnelly on it.”

  It took Kyle a few days of leveraging a lifetime of island contacts to pry information out of the close-knit community of builders and contractors. My friend, Pat Folger, had put up a guest cottage for one of the burglary victims; Billy Delavane had built the custom staircase. Kyle got a list of all Folger’s subs—from electricians and plumbers to plasterers and painters. The other houses had no large-scale projects going on through the winter months, but Kyle contacted the owners, and through them he found the caretakers, and the caretakers gave him lists. Some owed him favors (a warning instead of a DUI), some had been pals with his grandfather. Some accepted the standard bribe: a Bud Lite eighteen-pack.

  When the roll call was complete, Kyle surprised me by taking the next step. I’d been teaching him for five years; he was finally starting to learn something. Baby steps—simple procedure. But I made sure to give him what my old boss in L.A. used to all an “attaboy” when he laid the five long lists—and the one short list—on my desk the next Monday morning.

  He had done the cross-referencing. Only three people had worked in all the burglarized houses in the off-season. Arturo Maturo, the plumber, Tom Danziger, the electrician—and Mike Henderson, the painter. They had all worked on the Lomax house a few years back and had all been suspects, briefly. They all had other secrets they were reluctant to share, and by the end of the investigation I felt more like a parish priest than a police officer. I gave them the only absolution I could; I let them go with a thank you and an apology.

  But now they were all on the blotter again.

  I cleared the first two quickly. Maturo had been draining the pipes after one of the families came up for Christmas and the kids had returned in March to grab some summer clothes. Their selfies showed most of the loot in the background. That let Maturo off the hook.

  Danziger had done extensive re-wiring in two of the houses, and the inspector remembered various stolen objects still in place when came over to sign off on the work.

  None of that cleared them of every house on the list, but we were assuming one thief and one modus operandi for all the crimes. Beyond that, Danziger and Maturo were unlikely suspects. Plumbers and electricians ruled as blue-collar royalty on Nantucket. They had no need for petty theft to augment their incomes and no reason to jeopardize their standing in the hierarchy of the building trades by stealing from their customers. At around two hundred bucks an hour, most people thought they were stealing anyway.

  That left Mike Henderson.

  As usual, he had no alibi. All the circumstantial evidence was against him. He had worked in all the houses, mostly alone. He had often remarked that painting was a socially sanctioned form of trespassing, and more than one client had fired him, accusing him of that very crime. He was always broke, scrounging a living from job to job, so he was motivated to pick up a few extra dollars by theft. He charged according to the model of car he found in the garage and felt no compunction about gouging the wealthy. So why not help himself to the odd silver teapot or lightship basket?

  But he was angry and baffled when I brought him in for questioning. It’s hard to fake that level of outrage.

  “Check my bank account! See if you can find all this money I’m supposed to be stealing. I hope you do find it! I could use it. We’re a month behind on our mortgage payments right now.”

  I pushed against the edge of my desk, rolled my chair back a few inches. We were talking in my office, much to Haden Krakauer’s dismay. He liked doing things by the book. As far as my assistant chief was concerned, Mike was a suspect in a string of B&E felonies, and ought to be treated that way. I wasn’t so sure. I hadn’t arrested Mike, and I didn’t want to Mirandize him. I wanted to talk, but I wasn’t going to shove him into an interrogation room like a common criminal.

  At least not yet. “Your bank account is the last place I’d expect you to stash stolen money, Mike. You told me yourself—small-time house-painters are the last stalwarts of the cash economy.”

  “Thanks a lot.”

 
“You don’t work for big contractors. You don’t carry worker’s comp. Not since the Lomax job. You don’t have big crew anymore, either—or a big payroll to meet. When you need a forty-foot ladder, or someone you trust to roll a ceiling, you ask your friends. Right?”

  “Right.”

  “It’s a collective. You all fly under the radar and you all prefer cash payments, rolls of hundreds—”

  “Nantucket Sawbucks.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Some people call them Nantucket Tens, but that sounds like a political movement.”

  “Maybe you are a political movement. Guerilla painting…steal from the rich and give to the poor. Which would be you, I assume. Unless you’re also donating to the food bank.”

  “I can’t afford to donate to anyone! It’s like my dad used to say, I have to take out a loan to pay attention.”

  “And yet your wife is driving a brand new Jeep Grand Cherokee.”

  “That was a gift. From her father.”

  “And you can prove that.”

  “Do I have to?”

  “You might.”

  “So you can just…audit my whole life over some random accusation?”

  I shrugged. “It’s one way to prove you’re innocent.”

  “When we asked Cindy’s dad to help us pay for Montessori school, it was just like this. ‘Should you really be going out to dinner in your financial situation?’ ‘That sounds like quite the expensive vacation for a fellow in your straightened circumstances.’”

  “So what did you do?”

  “I told him to take his money and go fuck himself, and I put the kids in public school.”

  “Good for you.”

  “That wouldn’t really work in this case.”

  “No, but I’ll tell you something, Mike. I’m going to stick with the foundational assumption of American jurisprudence—that you’re innocent until proven guilty. Still, someone’s been stealing stuff out of the houses you work on.”

  “So…what are you going to do?”

  I gave him my best encouraging smile. “Catch them.”

  ***

  Unfortunately, I had another criminal matter to deal with that day, one much closer to home. It had begun the week before, with Jane Stiles’ yard sale. Rain had forced the event inside and we spent the morning hastily arranging antique furniture, glassware, rugs and runners, and a rack of vintage women’s dresses in the cramped confines of her cottage.

  Otherwise, the sale was normal: advertised for ten o’clock, with the first early birds showing up at eight, helping themselves to a Downyflake donut from the traditional box of a dozen Jane always set out for the shoppers.

  The usual crowd appeared by the formal start of the sale—long-time customers (Jane’s family ran a legendary consignment store back in the day), old friends, and the small tribe of local hoarders and collectors, along with the occasional tourist.

  The scroungers were a diverse group—from high school history teacher Roy Danvers to Sam Trikilis, my garbage man; from landscapers and masons to Sheriff Bob Bulmer; and a dot-com millionaire who had just bought the giant house next door. The music from his parties on those early summer nights made Jane feel like Nick Carraway in The Great Gatsby.

  The kids all pitched in, Caroline talking up the merchandise and horse-trading the prices, Tim manning the cash box. Jane’s son, Sam, helped carry the smaller items to the cars. The sale went well and the rain let up in the early afternoon, with a fresh south wind tearing the clouds apart, revealing ragged patches of blue sky. In accordance with another long-standing Stiles family tradition, we skimmed some of the cash proceeds and treated ourselves to dinner for five at the Sconset Café.

  That was Sunday night. Tuesday morning Jane noticed that her fore-edge books were missing. She hadn’t included them in the sale and never would. They had belonged to her grandfather and she had inherited them after a scuffle with her sister, who had taken the five volumes from the old man’s house the day he died, along with a Matisse screen and various other valuables. Fortunately the will specified that Jane got the books, and she managed to recover them. Her sister already had them packaged up and ready to auction off on eBay.

  I had never seen a fore-edge book before and neither had my kids. They’re the perfect artifact for a detective, because the art they feature—in the case of Jane’s books, paintings of various Nantucket landmarks—is hidden. The images only appear on the outside edge of the pages when you fan the book open. With the book closed, there’s no way to know the pictures exist.

  It’s a book! It’s a toy! Tim seemed particularly fascinated with the trick, as well as the subject matter. Many of the featured destinations no longer existed—the black Washing Pond water tower, the old Straight Wharf Theater. He even said he’d love to buy one if he only had the money and Jane was willing to part with it. I think she found his enthusiasm touching.

  But then, on Tuesday, she saw him riding away from her cottage on his bike with his school backpack bulging.

  And the books were gone.

  It may seem like an open-and-shut case from this brief description: Tim had motive and opportunity. But Jane was mostly living with me that summer, and only used the cottage for a writing studio. Most of the time the place was deserted and she’d never even owned a key to the front door. Anyone who’d been snooping around at the sale could have come back for what my old boss in L.A., Chuck Obremski, used to call a “five-finger discount.” Everyone there had a motive, and anyone who took the time to study Jane’s routines had an opportunity.

  But Tim was the only one Jane saw at the scene of the crime.

  “I hate to even bring this up,” she’d said that night after dinner. We had strolled into town and were walking along Easy Street. She sat down on one of the benches facing the harbor.

  “Tell me,” I said.

  So she did.

  We sat in silence for a while.

  “You know he didn’t do it,” I said finally.

  “I hope he didn’t. But he was out there by himself the day after the sale. What was he doing there?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You’re going to have to ask him.”

  “Yeah.” Then after a few moments: “How would it work in one of your books?”

  She relaxed a little, reached out a hand to let a passing Labradoodle take a sniff. She had time for one quick ruffle behind the ears before the owner, a slim blonde in a yoga outfit, yanked him away. Jane squinted in thought. “You’d need parts of all five books to crack a code. Or maybe they’d be clues to some kind of crazy scavenger hunt.”

  “How about someone just taking them and selling them to collectors?”

  “Naaa. Too boring.”

  “But this is the real world, and they’re worth a lot of money.”

  “I guess.”

  “Tim doesn’t need money. He’s a kid. He gets an allowance.”

  “Unless he’s on drugs. Or something.”

  “But he’s not. I know the signs. And so do you.”

  She nodded. We sat for a while more. An artist started setting up to paint the view. “You still need to talk to him,” she said.

  I shrugged. “Interrogations are my specialty.”

  “Innocent until proven guilty,” Mike Henderson said the next day, riding shotgun in my cruiser. “Not too many people really believe that. In America it’s more like you’re guilty even after you’re proven innocent—like O.J. Simpson, or that car guy. DeLorean. He was acquitted, too. But everybody knows he sold coke to finance his car company.”

  “You’re a cynical man, Mike,” I said.

  “Which makes me normal. And you’re not cynical at all—which makes you kind of a freak, to be honest. But in a good way.”

  “Especially right now.”

  I was investigating the burglarized
jobsites, talking to the families. I had Mike with me because I wanted his painter’s eye on the crime scenes, and I was curious to see how he’d react to the victims. More importantly, I wanted them to see Mike on good terms with the chief, and cooperating with law enforcement.

  Nothing we had found out so far made his case look any better. Two houses had surveillance cameras working year-round, and both had been crudely disabled. One was covered by a piece of the burlap used by landscapers for wrapping shrubs to block the cold. Hungry deer chewed through the burlap sometimes, and the wind could have blown a scrap against the lens. But this piece of fabric was cut cleanly, with a knife—like the Swiss Army knife that Mike always carried. The other house was even more damning. What looked like bird droppings obscuring the camera lens turned out to be paint—the very paint Mike had been using on the job.

  The victims didn’t share my quaint beliefs about innocence and guilt any more than Mike did. They weren’t pleased to see him, but they had to pretend to welcome me. At least I got detailed inventories of the missing items. “My belongings,” one of the women moaned to me.

  “A Stickley table, two Tiffany lamps, a first edition of the 1930 Random House Moby Dick with the Rockwell Kent illustrations. You have quite an eye, buddy,” I said to Mike.

  “Someone does.”

  I sighed. “It’s hard to hate a criminal who loves Rockwell Kent.”

  “He doesn’t love Rockwell Kent! He knows he can get a couple of grand for the book. He’s probably sold it already.”

  Cynic.

  We caught a break on the last house Mike had painted, a hulking pile on Medouie Creek Road in Polpis. Mike still had the keys and the alarm codes. The family wasn’t going to arrive for another week. As usual, they had threatened to be on-island by Memorial Day to crack the whip on the tradesmen, but weren’t actually due until the Fourth of July. “They think we work because we’re afraid of them,” Mike said. “Actually we work because we want to get paid. False panic is not required.”