Elin Hilderbrand - The Castaways

In this part of the restaurant there were only two tables seated, and the Chief did not recognize the people. Tourists. The TV set was too far away to see the score of the Sox game. A waitress approached with a Budweiser for the Chief and another drink for Addison, even though he already had a healthy drink in front of him. She set the drinks down and said, “Would you like to place an order?”

Addison shook his head. “Nothing for me.”

The Chief was starving. Andrea had fed the twins microwaved hot dogs on some stale-looking buns, along with a couple of slices of pale watermelon, and although the Chief liked kid food-chicken nuggets, mac and cheese-nothing about the twins’ meal had appealed to him or to them. To be polite, he should wait for Jeffrey before he ordered, but etiquette was not the Chief’s strong suit and everyone knew it.

“Bleu burger well done, please. Fries. Coleslaw with extra horseradish. And start me with something… the jalapeño poppers.”

“Will do,” the waitress said.

“Jesus, Ed,” Addison said.

“I know,” the Chief said. “It’s a one-way ticket on the Heart-burn Express.”

Addison swilled the rest of his drink as if it were water and jostled the ice.

“Jesus yourself,” the Chief said.

“Yeah,” Addison said. “Phoebe thinks I have a problem.”

“Do you?”

“Have a problem?” He laughed joylessly. “I have a few.”

“I’m going to be honest with you,” the Chief said. “You don’t look that great.”

“Am I supposed to look great? It hasn’t even been a month. Can you believe it? It’s only been twenty-six days, but it’s like our whole reality has changed.”

“You’re taking it hard?”

“Is there another way to take it?” Addison’s eyes welled with tears. The Chief had seen it all during his seventeen years on the force, but one of his least favorite things was watching a grown man cry. He thought about all the phone calls between Tess and Addison on the day before Tess died. Five phone calls from Addison to Tess on the final morning. He had been trying to reach her. But why? Along with the tox report and what to do about Andrea, this was one of the things the Chief turned over incessantly in his mind. There had to be an explanation. Should he ask?

Among the four men, Greg and Addison had been the closest friends. They were the outgoing, party-all-the-time type who attended bachelor parties and took golf weekends, who went fishing and sailing and played bocce on the beach, clinking beer bottles after a good lie and offering high fives. When Addison got Celtics tickets or front row to see Jimmy Buffett, he always took Greg. Greg was his little buddy, his much younger fraternity brother; Addison told a joke and Greg was the first to laugh. That, perhaps, was the reason Addison looked like a jigsaw puzzle with a couple of pieces missing. He’d lost his sidekick, his Sundance Kid.

The Chief said, “Andrea’s a mess. What about Phoebe?”

“Phoebe?” Addison said. He sucked down the first third of his second drink and said, “The strange thing is that Phoebe is just fine. She’s actually better than she’s been in a long time. I’m sure everyone thought Phoebe would collapse, this would be the last straw, but she’s great. She’s exercising, eating, smiling.”

“Mmmm,” the Chief said. He had seen Phoebe on the Fourth and had noticed how luminous she looked. “And how goes it with the estate?”

“The estate?” Addison looked perplexed. “Oh, fine. We’re going to list the house at seven-fifty.”

The Chief nodded. There were forty or fifty follow-up questions to ask about the house and the furnishings and the personal effects, the business of the deaths, the selling off and cleaning up of two full lives, but the Chief wanted to ask about the phone calls. Who knew when he would get another chance? He was a policeman; he had to know. He would be direct, no funny business, no innuendo.

“I noticed there were a bunch of calls from you to Tess on the morning she died. Five, to be exact.”

Addison stared. The eye contact was reassuring, because what did a liar do? He dropped his eyes to his drink.

“Was something going on?” the Chief asked.

“Going on?”

“Happening? Was she thinking of selling the house or renting a place for her college roommate or…” He was giving Addison a chance to lie here, and put his mind at ease, at least temporarily. “Why so many phone calls?”

Addison shrugged; his stare did not relent. “We were friends.”

“Well, obviously,” the Chief said. “We were all friends. But why were you trying to reach her? Five phone calls in half an hour. What for?”

“What for?”

“Yeah.”

Addison hunched his shoulders. “What are you asking me, Ed?”

“I’m asking what you wanted to talk to her about. If you saw half a dozen calls from me to Tess, you would want to know what was going on, wouldn’t you? You would want to know what we were talking about.”

“I would figure it was your business. I wouldn’t interrogate you.”

“That’s not what I’m doing.”

“It sure as hell sounds like it.”

“Okay, well, while I’m at it, I have another question.”

Addison held eye contact. “What would that be?”

“In the bag of the items the Coast Guard recovered was Tess’s phone.”

“You have the phone. You just said you checked it.”

“It went missing the day she died. That night. And you were at the Drake house. Did you take Tess’s cell phone? Do you have it?”

Addison’s nostrils flared, ever so slightly. “No.”

“I need you to tell me the truth. The phone could have clues still on it. I didn’t look at her text messages, for example.”

“Why not?”

“I didn’t have time. I was dealing with Andrea.” The Chief paused. “Do you have the phone, Addison? Just tell me.”

“No.”

“Okay,” the Chief said. He was sure now that Addison did have the phone, but what could he do? Get a search warrant? Turn the phone into evidence? Let the whole island know that Tess’s and Greg’s deaths were, maybe, more than an accident?

“If you find the phone…” the Chief said. “If for some reason Phoebe has it, or it turns up…”

“You’ll be the first to know,” Addison said.

The waitress approached timidly with the jalapeño poppers. She looked nervous. It was the Mafia Table replete with men speaking in angry whispers. The Chief waved her in. Food, yes, hurry, put the plate down, the Chief was starving. He ate when he was nervous or stressed out, and he was both things in extremis right now. He popped a popper right away, then regretted it. The popper was filled with molten lava that branded his tongue with a sizzling hiss. He gasped and nearly spit the glowing coal into his napkin, but both the waitress and Addison were watching him. If Addison could bluff, so could he. Thumbs up! Delicious!

“Another beer,” he whispered. “Please.”

“And a drink for me,” Addison said.

Just like that, the moment was past, the topic was kaput, and to revisit the question of the cell phone or the reason for Addison’s phone calls would seem aggressive. The Chief would not be able to uncover anything. Addison, despite his diminished appearance, was cunning-that Ivy League education meant something, as did the charm, the business acumen, the money, the languages, the connections. Addison was as slippery as a fish, but he would not get caught like a fish. There were two types of men, cops and robbers, and Addison… well, the Chief hated to say it, but he was a robber. The kind who stole a man’s money and his property. Greg had been a robber, too, the kind who stole a woman’s heart. The Chief was a cop through and through, but that didn’t mean he would prevail. Going head to head with Addison, he almost certainly would not.