Mark Mills - Amagansett

‘A year, two years.’

‘Try and be more specific.’

Cordwell thought on it. ‘Just under two years.’

‘Why did they break off their engagement?’

‘Differences. I don’t know. She ended it.’

‘You must have heard something.’

‘You know,’ said Cordwell, casting his mind back, or at least appearing to, ‘it really wasn’t discussed.’ He paused. ‘It was never going to be easy, what with Gayle.’

‘Gayle Wallace? What about her?’

‘They were an item once, Justin and Gayle.’

‘What are you saying, he switched horses in mid-stream?’

‘It was over with Gayle by then, but she still wasn’t happy when she heard about Lillian.’

I bet she wasn’t, thought Hollis.

‘What does Penrose do?’

Cordwell snorted, amused by the notion. ‘He doesn’t have to do anything. His family has a bank.’

‘And what do you do, Mr Cordwell?’

‘Me?’

‘Aside from persecuting Jews?’

Cordwell was too angry to manufacture any kind of response at first. ‘Are we finished here?’ he asked sharply.

‘No, we’re not. Penrose came to see Lillian about a month ago.’

‘Did he now?’ sighed Cordwell.

‘Why would he do that?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I mean did he still carry a torch for Lillian?’

Cordwell hesitated before replying. ‘It’s possible. He was pretty upset when it ended.’

It was a hard image to conjure up, Justin Penrose upset by anything.

‘What’s this all about?’ asked Cordwell.

‘I’d appreciate it if you didn’t mention this conversation to anyone.’

‘And I’d appreciate it if you gave me those negatives now.’

Hollis handed them over.

If Cordwell had bothered to examine the negatives before slipping them into the envelope he would have noted that they didn’t match the incriminating photos. Rejects from the batch of shots taken by Abel, one was of the Rosens’ daughter, a ravenhaired beauty with whom Abel, in characteristic fashion, had been mightily and momentarily taken; the other showed Hollis on his hands and knees in a flower border, the crack of his ass just showing above the waistband of his pants.

A print of this last shot now hung on the wall of Hollis’ kitchen. Framed up and presented to him at the time by Abel, the handwritten title on the matt proclaimed: The Thin Blue Line.

Fifteen

As he mounted the steps to the library, Conrad’s knee buckled under him. He swore, then gathered up the books that had spilled from beneath his arm.

‘Good morning, Mrs Emerson,’ he said, approaching the front desk.

She looked up from the typewriter, peering at him over the top of her spectacles. ‘Mr Labarde. Returning, are we?’

‘Yes.’

‘Overdue, are they?’

‘How did you guess?’

She pulled the sheet of paper from the typewriter and handed it to him. He scanned it.

‘I was going for a note of mild outrage,’ she said.

‘Mild, huh?’

She smiled.

‘I’ve a confession to make,’ said Conrad.

‘Unless you want the whole town to know, I’m probably not the person to share it with.’

Conrad handed her one of the books. ‘I think I just broke the spine.’

‘No,’ she said, examining it. ‘You definitely broke the spine.’

‘I’ll replace it, of course.’

‘What, and deny Mrs Cartwright the challenge? She’s a whiz with the glue, you know.’

Conrad settled the fine, then asked where the back copies of the East Hampton Star were stored. Because the dates he was after were more than six months old, he was sent through to the Reading Room, Mrs Emerson appearing a few minutes later with two bound volumes on a trolley.

Conrad hefted them on to the table. He could see her itching to ask what he wanted them for, and he’d prepared an answer for her, but it wasn’t required. She fought her curiosity, returning to the front desk.

Conrad took a seat and stared at the spines: April-June 1946, July-September 1946. He found the initial newspaper report without any difficulty. News of Lizzie Jencks’ tragic death had, of course, made the front page of the Star. Two issues later, the story still warranted the front page, though it had been relegated to the bottom right-hand corner, rolling over into a handful of column inches on page three.

By now, Chief Milligan of the Town Police Department was reluctantly conceding that the investigation had produced no concrete leads in the past couple of weeks, and possibly never would. The incident had occurred on a Saturday night when the roads of the South Fork were notoriously infested with drivers who had flooded in for the weekend from up-island or New York City. Questions remained, however. The Medical Examiner had placed the time of death at somewhere between midnight and two o’clock in the morning, and no one seemed to know what a young girl was doing walking a country road at that hour of the night.

Come August, coverage of the story had all but petered out. The last mention Conrad could find of it was in an editorial that leveled its sights at the ‘people from away’ crowding this quiet corner of Suffolk County. The piece had the hollow report of a blind, scatter-gun blast into the night, the intruder long gone.

Conrad worked his way back through the newspapers, sifting for signs. The first issue with news of the incident had come out on the Thursday, young Lizzie already five days dead. In the same edition, there was a brief report of a wedding that had taken place in Sag Harbor on the Saturday in question. The festivities, complete with impressive fireworks display, had rolled on into the early hours of Sunday morning. The names of the happy couple, not known to Conrad, suggested summer people, the kind of society event Lillian might have attended.

The geography was wrong, though. There was no way you could end up on Town Lane when driving from Sag Harbor to East Hampton, not unless you had completely lost your way. Still, it was the best he could come up with, and certainly better than nothing.

He almost left it at that. Thankfully, he cast a quick eye over the Thursday issue from the week predating the accident. Buried on page seven was a small announcement, no more than a few lines, announcing the first dinner dance of the season at the Devon Yacht Club on Gardiner’s Bay, set to take place that Saturday night.

The Devon Yacht Club, one of Lillian’s favored haunts.

He experienced no surge of relief, no sense of elation. Rather, he felt a chill descend upon him, the stillness and clarity a hunter experiences when first sighting his quarry, his world narrowing to a point, the periphery blurring, all else forgotten.

He stared at the page for a good while, not focusing on the print, but deep in thought, weighing his various options. They shared one piece of common ground: whichever way he chose to proceed, it was time to start drawing Deputy Hollis into the hunt.

Sixteen

Hollis had seen Chief Milligan angry before, but never like this—puce with rage, spittle flying.

‘He’s just a big old blowhard,’ he said to himself. Mary Calder’s description of Milligan had proved a source of comfort in recent days, somehow consigning the Chief to the ranks of the ridiculous, emasculating him. Confronted with the volcanic presence before him, however, her words had lost their sting.

‘Well!?’ bellowed Milligan.

Hollis groped his way back to reality. An official complaint from the Maidstone Club. Unseemly conduct. Hollis throwing his weight around.

It wasn’t looking good. Just one thread of hope. There was a chance the complaint hadn’t come from Anthony Cordwell. No. Odds were the complaint had come from the club itself, probably without Cordwell’s knowledge.