Jack Montalbano, the fire chief, approached them. He was a big, hearty Portuguese with a crushing handshake. His wife had died of ovarian cancer the year before, and Kayla hadn’t spoken to him since she’d dropped a roasted chicken off at his house after the funeral.
“Hi, Jack,” she said.
“We’ll find her,” he said, putting his arm around Kayla. “Don’t you worry. The boys will pull her out on the WaveRunners. They always do.”
“Thank you, Jack,” Kayla said. “We know you’re doing the best you can.”
Jack shook hands with Raoul. “Heard you’re working on the Ting house,” Jack said. “Heard that job is so big you have your own phone number for the site.”
Raoul shrugged. “Lots of job sites have their own phone numbers. You know how it is.”
Jack rubbed his hand over his black hair. He was in street clothes: a denim shirt, khaki pants. Jack’s wife, Janey, had been a secretary at the elementary school. She knew every kid’s name by heart, and she had always called when one of Kayla’s kids was sick or in trouble. “No, I don’t. I’m sure as hell not making any money off the wash-ashores the way some folks are. And these Tings, they’re Chinese, right?” Both Jack and Janey had been born and raised on the island; they were warm and kind people, although Jack was known to be close-minded about anyone who wasn’t a native Nantucketer. Round-the-pointers, wash-ashores-this was what he called the summer people and even folks like Kayla and Raoul, who’d lived here for twenty years.
“Does their ethnicity matter?” Raoul said.
“Jack, I want you to find my friend,” Kayla said.
“Rumor on the scanner has it that you ladies were out here fooling around.”
Rumors were everywhere on Nantucket, Kayla thought. Even the police scanner. “Depends what you mean by fooling around.”
“I mean drinking,” Jack said. “Drinking and swimming in waters that would be a challenge for a good swimmer, sober. It’s two o’clock in the morning, Kayla.”
“We’ve been coming out here for twenty years,” Kayla said. “We’re not a bunch of drunk teenagers you can just chastise, Jack.” But her voice sounded whiny and overly defensive, like that of a drunk teenager.
He let a “Chrissake” out under his breath and then stuffed his hands deep in the pockets of his khakis. “It might be best if you all stepped out of the way,” he said. “Maybe you could wait in your car?”
Kayla and Val sat on the front bumper of the Trooper with Raoul between them. Kayla watched Paul Henry pick the empty Methuselah out of the sand. He read the label as he walked over to them.
“You ladies drank all this?”
Kayla huffed. “We’re over twenty-one, Paul.”
“I asked you a question,” Paul said. “I’m your friend, Kayla, but I’m also a policeman and I’m trying to help. Was your friend drinking champagne?”
Kayla threw her hands up. “The rumors are confirmed. We were drinking! Blatantly breaking the open container law!”
Paul scowled at her, unamused. “So you estimate that the woman we’re looking for drank a third of this bottle?”
Kayla looked at Val. Val was asleep with her eyes open. “Not a third. Just a couple of glasses.”
“Two glasses?” he asked.
“Two or three,” Kayla said.
“And how much did you have?” he asked. “This is a huge bottle.”
“Does it matter, Paul?” Raoul asked. “They come out here every year to have some champagne and go for a swim. Celebrate the end of summer. That’s all this was.”
“I’m not insinuating anything else,” Paul said. “But I like to know what I’m dealing with. There’s a big difference between a swimming woman and an intoxicated swimming woman. A big difference.”
A young policeman whom Kayla didn’t recognize approached Paul with a handful of glass shards he’d gathered from the shoreline. The remnants of the champagne glasses.
“Don’t get excited,” Kayla said. “Those are our glasses. I threw them in the water.”
Paul picked up a piece of glass and turned it in the moonlight. “Was this before or after Ms. Riley disappeared?”
“After,” Kayla said.
“So it wasn’t as if you had a fight with Ms. Riley before she decided to go swimming?”
Kayla disliked the way Paul said the words “go swimming.” He said them like they were a euphemism for something else. “No,” she said.
Paul gave the piece of glass back to the young policeman, who was wearing surgical gloves. The coast guard boat moved farther out, and the WaveRunners zipped back and forth closer to shore. Jack Montalbano watched them, smoking a cigarette.
“Why aren’t they diving?” Kayla asked. “Jack, why aren’t they diving?”
“They’re looking above the surface right now,” Jack said. “They’ll dive only if they have to.”
Paul’s walkie-talkie rasped, and Kayla heard the sound of a helicopter.
“Coast guard sent a copter,” Paul Henry said. He sounded impressed.
The coast guard helicopter had a searchlight that swept over the water like the eyes of God. Paul Henry squinted at it, the tendons of his neck stretched tight.
“That baby has a sensor that detects body heat above the water,” he said. “The helicopter will locate her, Kayla. You can bet on it.”
They waited while the helicopter circled the area. At one point it was so far away that Kayla lost track of it, and her stomach turned at the thought of Antoinette all the way out there. Everything keeled to one side like a capsizing boat. Kayla vomited in the sand-the champagne, the lobsters, one stinky, lumpy mess. How had this happened? She wanted to hit reverse, rewind, she wanted to rewrite the way the evening had gone. One moment all of them were safe, the next moment not. Raoul patted her back and gave her a towel to wipe her mouth. Paul Henry handed her a thermos of cold water, which was so unexpectedly beautiful and welcome, tears came to her eyes. She drank nearly the whole thing, letting it drip down her chin. Raoul smoothed her hair.
“Ssshhh, it’s okay.”
But, of course, it wasn’t okay. The helicopter was out of sight, the rescue boat a mere blip on the horizon, and then the WaveRunners pulled onto shore and the riders climbed off, shaking their heads.
“She’s not out there anywhere, boss,” one of the riders told Jack Montalbano. “Do you want us to dive?”
Jack answered them facing the water, so Kayla didn’t hear his response. He pointed thirty or forty yards out and the riders climbed back on the WaveRunners taking masks and snorkels with them. Out looking for Bob-that was what the fire department called it when they were searching for a body. Kayla couldn’t bring herself to tell Raoul the worst part-that, seconds before Antoinette danced away, Kayla had accused Antoinette of sleeping with him. Kayla added to her list of things that money couldn’t buy. It couldn’t buy words back once they were spoken; it couldn’t buy her best friend back from the dark ocean.
Kayla woke when she heard the helicopter hammering toward them. She was still sitting on the bumper of the Trooper, crushed up against Raoul, who stared at the helicopter as it approached. The Suburbans were parked nearby, but now the men who had formerly been all action sat in the sand or stood with their hands dangling at their sides. Waiting. Then Paul Henry got static over his walkie-talkie, and he moved away as he listened to the report. He looked their way once, and Kayla’s heart fluttered with optimism. But his slumping shoulders suggested defeat. He spoke into his walkie-talkie and slowly headed back to them.
“They’re not picking her up with the heat sensor,” Paul told them. “They want to start a recovery mission.”