“I am off the clock, my good friend, and you are totally over the line. So don’t be offended but we’re about to be disconnected.”
“Coop, I’m calling because Jessica’s dragging you into the story.”
“Oh no she’s not.”
“She’s been calling the squad ’round the clock since I refused to see her again. She spoke to Sergeant Chirico on Monday. Made up this whole bullshit story about her life being in jeop because you used your influence to pull me off the bodyguard assignment for our last big case.”
The timing for that intersection of their personal drama and our last case would have been about right. I was sorry I had thrown the rest of my drink down the drain.
“He knows better than that. What reason did she give?”
“She told Chirico that-I’m just saying what the judge told him-that you were jealous of her ’cause you had a thing for me…”
“A thing? What did I have for you, Mike? Is a ‘thing’ something sexual? ’Cause if you can’t even say the word, I doubt you’re much good at getting it on. Explain this one to me.”
“I know it doesn’t make sense, Coop. All you are right now vis-à-vis me is pissed off.”
“Dead on.”
“So just to make trouble for me, Judge Pell says you had me assigned to work with you, expressly to end my relationship with her, which also ended her protection by the department. And by the way? That’s when the attempt on her life was made.”
“Tell me Manny Chirico didn’t fall for this, did he?”
“He’s solid as a rock. And he’s trying to keep it away from the lieutenant till we can figure out how to defuse Pell.”
I was usually good with stalkers, but I had no business in the middle of this mess.
“Jessica’s goal is to meet with Commissioner Scully if Chirico doesn’t do anything to discipline me by the end of next week, Coop. She wants me out of the homicide squad,” Mike said, referring to the most elite unit in the department. “The judge wants Scully to flop me back to uniform, and if he believes her for a minute, that’s exactly what he’ll do.”
SEVEN
All week, in anticipation of our Vineyard trip, I had counted on the fresh evening breeze to help knock me out for a good night’s sleep. Now I was practically frantic, thrashing around in bed as Mike’s conversation trumped even my thoughts of the dead girl lying in the morgue without a name on her toe tag.
I’d made some stupid decisions in my love life, but how could Mike have let himself get involved with a head case like Jessica Pell? Street-smart, flamboyant, always keen to be the center of attention, and crazy enough that some people thought she had written the threatening letters to herself to remain in the spotlight.
And if she was looking to ruin Mike’s career, perhaps Jessica had already made the same run at Paul Battaglia in order to derail my prospects, too. I replayed this morning’s scene in my mind-McKinney and Battaglia rolling over and giving me the case in the Park without argument, whether or not it proved to be a sexual assault or intimate partner violence.
Now Mike’s comments at dinner were really stinging. If Jessica Pell was behind the DA’s decision to undermine me, then he was right that this case was the dog that could be my downfall. That was the way Battaglia liked to move mountains-without leaving fingerprints, if it were possible to do so.
I rolled over onto my stomach to try to relax myself, but my attention came back to Jessica Pell herself. What the hell had I ever done to cross her? She’d been a prosecutor in the Bronx DA’s office for four or five years before flaming out there by mishandling three child abuse cases. Then she’d gone to a firm that did nickel-and-dime defense work, mostly DWIs and low-level drug possession. It was her affair with one of the mayoral deputies that launched her career on the bench. Jessica never played well in the sandbox with other women, but I hadn’t ever exchanged more than ten words with her outside the courtroom.
I crunched the pillow under my head and turned onto my side. Whatever sleep I managed was in between thoughts about how I could help Mike navigate his way through this difficult morass that threatened his career and both our reputations. I struggled to remember who in my office had approved my assignments of Mike during our last few cases. They couldn’t go through to the NYPD without a supervisor’s signature.
By seven A.M., my restlessness having barely abated all night, I saw no point in remaining in bed any longer. It was a glorious morning, and I slipped into the outdoor shower, looking out across Menemsha to the sailboats on the Vineyard Sound in the distance.
I dressed in jeans and a shirt, put the top down on my red Miata, and drove three miles to the Chilmark Store to pick up The New York Times and fresh muffins for Vickee and me. I took my first cup of coffee onto the porch of the store, sat in one of the rockers, unfolded the Times to read the story of the Park murder, pleasantly distracted by the parade of islanders, many of whom I was seeing for the first time this season-fishermen, lobstermen, waitresses, construction workers, house painters, schoolteachers, and landscapers-for whom this small general store was the same lifeline it served as for me.
I knew Vickee wouldn’t be awake for another couple of hours. Back at the house, I walked the perimeter of the property, enjoying the spring plantings that had started to bloom and added such color after the long, bleak island winter.
I tried to distance myself from the train wreck that had become Mike Chapman’s life, but nothing in my spectacular view contributed to calming me. I went inside to organize my dresser drawers and closets. There were shirts and sweaters of Luc’s that he had kept here-an array of sherbet-like colors in cashmere and cotton that reminded me of his warmth and affection as soon as I held them in my hands. I would need to wrap them and mail them back to him in France.
At around ten o’clock I had ground a bag of coffee beans, certain that the noise would awaken Vickee.
She stumbled downstairs half an hour later, expressing her delight in a morning without a wake-up visit from Logan.
We took our coffee on the deck, read the papers, then walked down and dangled our feet in the pool, deciding on a plan for the day.
“You seem fidgety, Alexandra. Did I upset you last night?”
“Nope.” As much as I didn’t want to withhold anything about Mike from Vickee, I assumed that what he had unloaded to me was in confidence. I expected that Mercer would be one of the first friends he would tell. “What do you want to do today?”
“Eat. Best option on the island.”
We had a lunchtime regime that was both obscenely fattening and wonderfully delicious. It started at the Bite-a tiny shack off to the side of the road in Menemsha where the Quinn sisters served up the best fried clams I’ve ever eaten. Then we walked farther down the road, bought a dozen of the freshest oysters the local ponds produced every day in season from Larsen’s Fish Market, and ate them on the dock, and ended our feast with an ice cream cone at the Galley, waiting for the line to go down at the hugely popular takeout place.
I kept Mike’s secret all day, checking my voice mail too often for messages that never appeared and texts that weren’t sent. I kept it through our bike ride to the Aquinnah Cliffs and back, enjoying the bright sunshine as we cycled home into the wind. And I kept it through dinner at the always crowded State Road-amazing seafood hauled in by island fishermen and salad from the chef’s own gardens-when we were finally ready for another meal at nine P.M.
It was my turn to be the designated driver, so I didn’t open a bottle of wine until we got home at eleven. “I’m going to the hot tub, Vickee. Put on your bathing suit and come along.”
“No wine in the hot tub.”