Richard Patterson - Fall from Grace

Mallory stared at him. “And you know all of that remained true,” he inquired more skeptically, “even though you weren’t here?”

Teddy had left a footprint, Adam guessed, or Nathan Wright had seen him near the promontory on the night their father died. “True, I wasn’t around. But you’re asking me to imagine a different man. I’ve spent time with Teddy now, and he’s the same. Are you familiar with Occam’s razor?”

The sharp look Mallory gave him reminded Adam of a bird. “That the simplest explanation is the best.”

Adam nodded. “That night my father was drunk, weakened, and very sick. Maybe he fell. Maybe he jumped-he was a dead man, regardless, and must have known it. Take your pick, Sergeant. Instead, you’re questioning my family about a hypothetical murder that is medically superfluous.” For a moment Adam stopped, gauging the impression he intended to make on Sean Mallory, one false, one true: that he could lose control of his emotions, speaking without thought; and that he would make a compelling character witness for his brother. “One more thing,” he continued, “before you decide that this was murder, and focus on Teddy or my mother. Considering the will-which is the sole motive you’ve got-only Carla Pacelli and Jenny Leigh stood to profit from my father’s death. There’s no way Pacelli didn’t know she was in the will. She’s the one who gained the most by giving him a shove, and it seems my mother saw her with him, in this very spot.

“But there’s something else. My father was a dying man-emotional, erratic, and drinking heavily. He was fully capable of waking up and realizing that my mother deserved better than disinheritance. She’d never done a thing to him but be a loyal wife and mother. Pacelli must have known that, too. Why take the chance he’d change his mind? Only when he went off this cliff did that become impossible.” Adam paused again, concluding evenly and slowly, “Too many suspects, too few reasons to settle on Mom or Teddy. But I’m sure you’ve thought of that.”

Mallory had, Adam perceived at once-that was why he had not arrested anyone. But he also knew things about Teddy that Adam did not. All I can tell you, Bobby had said, is there’s a problem with the autopsy report. Adam needed to find out what it was.

He felt Mallory watching him. “Thank you,” the sergeant said coldly. “You’ve been very helpful.”

A dangerous man, Adam was now certain.

Within an hour, the rain swept in from the Atlantic, heavy drops pelting the roof of Ben’s house with an arrhythmic crackle that, to Adam, sounded like gunfire. He stayed in his room, calling five men and two women he needed to meet with, then scoured the internet for information about Carla Pacelli. From his window he could see the guesthouse. Now and then, he imagined Teddy painting, enveloped in the gloom of his darkened skylight, trying to lose himself in some haunting image of the Vineyard. But Adam did not seek him out. It was not yet time.

In late afternoon, the storm passed. On impulse, Adam drove to Menemsha, parking near the wooden catwalk off the dock. The small fishing village was filled with tourists shopping for curios and crowding the fish markets in search of bass or salmon or lobster. Near the end of the dock the vast sweep of Menemsha Pond narrowed to meet the ocean. Here Ben Blaine had moored his Herreshoff. To Adam, the trim wooden craft, still perfectly maintained, had an orphaned quality. Against his will, he saw his father at the helm again, tensile and alert as he sailed into a headwind from that summer ten years before. But Jack’s sailboat, its near twin, had vanished from the water. Perhaps Jack had sold his. Yet Adam could still feel its tiller in his hand.

Paralyzed by memory, Adam stood there, the present erased by a sparkling day in August, an image of white sails racing to catch the wind. An hour passed, Adam half-aware of the smell of sea and salt and fish, so familiar from his past. As evening fell, he drove home, still avoiding his mother and brother, and set out from the promontory toward Nathan Wright’s old farmhouse.

As arranged, the two men met where the dirt path from Nathan’s place intersected with the trail along the cliff. Walking back toward the promontory, they spent the first few minutes catching up. Nate was from an old Vineyard family, the last of the property owners along the bluff who had not sold his land to summer people. A fisherman like Ben’s father, he was close to seventy, the years showing in his thinning hair and weathered face, the mica stubble on his chin. In the years since Adam had left, he learned, Nate’s wife had died, his four children had moved off-island. “Pretty soon,” he told Adam, “I’ll sell the property for as much as I can get. No doubt to some newcomer half my age, investment banker maybe, so I can put some of it in trust for the grandkids’ educations. It’s the way of things nowadays.”

The laconic, faintly bitter coda made Adam sad. “Where will you go?”

“Maybe live with my middle son, the one with the most children. Keep me young, I hope. Gets lonely here with no one.” As they reached the promontory, Nathan turned to Adam, hands in his pockets. “Times change. Only the rich can keep up with them. Or a smart man like your father.”

Even Nate’s voice sounded weathered, Adam thought, wearing away like the rest of him. “He wasn’t so smart at the end, Nate.”

Nate gave a grudging nod. “Maybe not. I don’t hold with what he did to Clarice, the soul of kindness ever since she was a girl. Though I’ve got to say, having met Ben’s girlfriend along this very trail, taken on her own she didn’t seem so bad. Not flashy like I expected.”

Adam gazed out at the horizon, backlit by orange rays of sun breaking through low white clouds. “So I hear,” he responded. “But an actress can play anyone. As matters stand, she’s about to become your neighbor.”

Nate frowned, shoulders hunched, squinting as he imagined this. “How’s your mother holding up?”

“As well as anyone could-you know how she is. But his death was a shock, his will a humiliation, his funeral an ordeal. My father took way more from her than money and her parents’ home.”

Nate cocked his head. “Never liked him much, did you?”

“I did. Then I stopped.”

“And never came back, not even to see your mother.”

“Oh, I saw her. Just not on this island. I work overseas, and it’s a long way from there to here.”

Nate turned, gazing at the flattened rock that covered much of the promontory’s surface. For a time he seemed lost in thought. Then he asked abruptly, “What’s on your mind, Adam?”

“My father’s death. I’m having trouble sorting out how he died and what his last few months were like. I’m hoping you can help me.”

In profile, Nate squinted. “About his state of mind, can’t tell you much. He pretty much went to ground.”

Beneath this reticence, Adam sensed, lay something more uncomfortable. Adopting a casual tone, he inquired, “When was the last time you saw him?”

Lips compressed, Nate faced him. “I’m not supposed to talk about that. Police business, they say, and no one else’s.”

Silent, Adam locked into his eyes. Turning away, Nate said, “Spooky how much you favor him.” Then he added slowly, “Guess there’s no harm in telling you what I already told that sergeant from the mainland. God knows it’s been keeping me up nights. Whatever else, Ben was your father.”

“He was that,” Adam agreed softly. “Whatever else.”

Nate folded his arms, gazing at the promontory. “I was walking along this trail,” he began. “Ben was standing here, not near the edge at all. That’s another reason the idea of him falling by accident bothers me so much-”