Suspicion

“This morning. She showed me some of her work.”

“Paints decorative tiles. Catalina tiles are world-famous. Ava refuses to even discuss any kind of memorial. Since Diana died we can’t spend two minutes together without a battle.” He cleared his throat. “Body’s never been found—that’s part of the problem. Good chance it never will, I’ve been told. Meanwhile, life has to go on.”

“Difficult to find closure, I would imagine,” Scott said, then cringed at the words. Closure. One of those pop psychology terms people say that mean absolutely nothing. Tie everything up in a neat little package and then move on. Lynsky pulled up outside the Argonaut office, and Scott grabbed his canvas backpack from the floor behind him and stuck out his hand. “Thanks for the tour, Dr. Lynsky.”

“Got a business deal for you,” Lynsky said. “You might as well accept, because you’re not going to support yourself with that paper, I don’t care what old Aggie Broadbent told you about the thing turning a profit. She just wanted to unload it.”

Scott watched the doctor leaf through a manila folder of papers he’d removed from under the front seat.

“You know much about the Lynsky family?” Sam asked, still riffling through papers.

“Some. I stopped by the Island Historical Society yesterday.”

“So you probably know my family owned this island years ago. Not for long. It changed hands a few times before it was deeded to the state around 1900. Diana was putting everything into a book before she died. I want it finished.” Lynsky stuck the folder back under the seat. “Need to sort through her papers before you see them, but if you’re interested, the book should solve your money problems. What do you think?”

“Sounds interesting,” Scott said. “What do your daughters think about it?”

“They don’t know anything about it,” Lynsky said. “And I don’t know that they need to. They get their hands on Diana’s papers and it’ll be yak-yak-yak. Stirring up things that don’t need to be stirred up, and the book will never get written.”

“Won’t they want to see the papers?”

“You want to write this thing or not?”

“I’m just asking,” Scott said.

“You let me deal with my daughters,” Sam said. “You do a good job with the book, they’ll be thrilled. A year from now, they’ll have forgotten all about the papers.” He fished under the seat, produced another file. “I’m going to give you a check right now,” he said. “Just to get things going.”

“Hold on a minute, Dr. Lynsky.” Things were moving a little too fast. “You don’t want to talk about this some more, see some samples of my writing?”

“Nah.” Lynsky was scrawling his name across the check in a bold black hand. “And it’s Sam.” He held out the check. “You worked for the L.A. Times. That’s good enough for me.”

Scott ignored the check. “I’d like to think things over first.”

“Suit yourself.” Lynsky dropped the check on Scott’s knee. “Might as well deposit this while you’re doing your thinking. It’ll tide you over when the advertising drops off. Meet me for breakfast at the Beehive tomorrow. Around eight-thirty. I’ll bring some things to get you started.”

“YOU SITTING DOWN?” Lil asked Ava later that afternoon when she called with the information on the cottage. “Guess who the owner turned out to be?”

“No idea,” Ava said.

“Your dad,” Lil said. “Seems he bought it back a few years ago, no idea what he intended to do with it. It’ll make things easier for you, I should think.”

Not necessarily, Ava thought as she walked up to the hospital to see her father. A volunteer in a pink smock was sorting through a stack of National Geographic magazines when Ava poked her head around the door of the hospital auxiliary office.

“Your father?” she said. “Let me think a minute. I saw him early this morning making rounds and then…” She paused and smiled. “You know your dad—doing ten things at the same time. Now what was it he said he had to do? Something about dropping by the Argonaut…”

“If he comes back in the next hour or so, please tell him I need to talk to him. I’ve got some things to do in town, so I’ll meet him back here.”

“All right, honey, I’ll tell him.” The volunteer peered at Ava. “You doing better?”

“Fine, thanks,” Ava said. Maybe she’d just get a billboard made up. Don’t ask. I’m fine. Fantastic. Never been better.

“Keep busy. That’s the best thing you can do.”

“Absolutely,” Ava agreed.

“Bring that dog of yours back. Everyone got such a kick out of him in that cape. It’s so heartwarming to see how animals raise people’s spirits.”

Ava smiled. Henri was a participant in the Pets Are Therapy program. For an hour every week Henri was stroked, petted and fussed over by the half a dozen or so hospice patients. They fed him treats, rolled balls across the floor and laughed at his shameless grandstanding. At the end of the hour, the patients looked happy, Henri seemed happy, and as Ava walked him back into town, she always felt…well, happier.

“How’s your sister?” The volunteer’s smile had cooled slightly. “Still living out by the horse stables?”

“Ingrid’s fine, too.” Tomorrow, she would try to go through the whole day without using the word fine. “She’s happy working with the horses, not dealing with people all the time. Listen, I need to get going.”

“Sure, honey.” The volunteer gave Ava a quick hug. “Take care, sweetie.”

As she left the hospital and walked down Avalon Canyon Road into town, Ava considered the merits of Ingrid’s solitary existence. No need for constant reassurance or pretending to be something you weren’t. If Ingrid felt morose or out of sorts, she just dug in her garden or rode horses until she was in the mood for human contact again.

Hands in the pockets of her denim jacket, Ava turned onto Sumner—past the tiny house and summer rentals that had once been tent sites owned by her grandfather—and onto Crescent, now thronged with tourists disembarking from the Catalina Express.

She stopped to look at a dress in the window of Island Fashions, a clingy pistachio-colored shift that would look great if she could lose the ten pounds she’d gained in the past two months. A minute on the lips, forever on the hips. Diana’s voice, taunting her. You should see me now, Mom, she thought. In the window she could see the reflected parade of passersby. A small stout man separated himself from the rest. He’d spotted her.

Too late to pretend she hadn’t seen him, she turned to smile at the mayor of Avalon. A sixtyish man in a tropical shirt, with a bald head and plump pink face and chins that dissolved into his neck. A sweetheart, but she couldn’t look at him without thinking of a melting ice-cream cone.

“…so hard for you,” he was saying now. “The council thought that one of your beautiful art pieces would be a fitting tribute to your mother.” He patted her arm and made room for a couple of straw-hatted tourists. “No pressure, though. We’d never want to do that. How you doing, anyway, honey?”

“Fine. Busy of course.”

“Well, that’s good.” His eyes lingered on her for a moment. “You know Muriel was just saying this morning—she runs the grief-counseling program at the hospital, you know—anyway, she was saying that all most people really need is someone to listen to them.”

Ava kept smiling. “It’s great that they have someone as dedicated as Muriel.”

“She’s a good listener,” the mayor said. “A real good listener.”

“Tell her I said hi,” Ava said.

“Will do. And, Ava, you take care now. And when you’re ready to think about that piece for your mother, bless her soul, you just give me a call.”

“Right,” Ava said. She crossed the road and walked along the seafront, killing time until she returned to the hospital to meet her father. A crowd of little girls in pigtails and Crayola-colored clothes were giggling and hitting each other with their backpacks. She caught the eye of one of them and winked. She kept walking, past the signs hawking rides in glass-bottom boats, past Olaf’s ice-cream store, past the guides hawking tours of the Casino and Jeep excursions into the interior. It was hard to walk through Avalon without running into someone she knew, but she’d discovered that if she kept her head down people were sometimes reluctant to approach her.

Which suited her just fine. Anything to avoid The Look. People had started treating her differently after Rob died. They’d smile and chat, but there was a new solicitousness in their voices. A caution, as though they were dealing with a convalescent who might relapse. They’d peer into her eyes as though to make sure someone was really there. Now, since her mother’s death, it was happening again.

She hated it. They meant well, but she hated it. Either she avoided people completely or, when that wasn’t possible, she became so impossibly bright and chipper that she was always expecting someone to rap her on the head and say, “Knock it off. We know you’re hurting. Just admit it.”

But she couldn’t. Instead, she’d breeze around doing her happier-than-thou schtick until she couldn’t stand herself anymore. Then she’d go home, wrap herself up in an old afghan her grandmother had knitted, pig out on whatever was on hand—amazingly, ice cream was always on hand—and fall asleep watching a cheesy movie on late-night TV. Then wake up hours later, screaming because she’d seen her mother’s face again staring up at her from beneath the water. I’m not happy, Ava. I haven’t been for some time.

BACK AT THE HOSPITAL, she found her father in his small office, just off the main corridor, waiting for the next patient. Dr. Sam Lynsky III wore a gold paper crown and a white lab coat over jeans.

“That place was falling apart when your grandmother had it,” he said after she told him about the cottage. “It needs to be torn down.”

“I can fix it up.” Ava folded her arms over her chest, ready to do battle. “Don’t give me a hard time about it, Dad. What’s it to you if I want to live there?”

“Ava, I am rattling around in a two-million-dollar property that was and still is your home. It’s lonely and unwelcoming and far too large, and I’d like nothing more than to come home in the evening to my daughter’s company—both my daughters, but I realize that’s asking too much. I can’t imagine how it could be a question of privacy, but—”

“It’s full of Mom,” Ava blurted, exactly the kind of reasoning she hadn’t intended to use. “Maybe it doesn’t bother you, Dad. Maybe you’re getting on just fine without her, but I can’t take it.”

“Ava.” Sam leaned back in his chair. “Your inability to deal with your mother’s death is hardly a plausible reason to buy a ramshackle piece of property. At some point, you’ll need to accept what happened. In the meantime, there are any number of other houses on the island.”

“Maybe so,” Ava said. “But I want that one.”

“Jerry the pharmacist is going to sell his place.” Sam had emptied a canvas briefcase onto the consulting-room floor. “Got the information in here somewhere… Oh, here’s something you might be interested in.” He tossed a brochure at Ava.

Ava glanced at the glossy ad for a Los Angeles gallery. “Dad, what does this have to do with Grandma’s cottage?”

“Nothing. Just pointing out the sort of marketing you need to do. Never going to get anywhere painting three tiles a week. Need to think big.”

Ava fumed inwardly. Her father kept digging, papers flying all around him. He wasn’t a large man, but with his extravagant gestures and nonstop barrage of words, he always seemed to make a room feel too small.

“Jerry’s house would be a smart buy,” he said. “Now where did I put that piece of paper?”

He continued to shuffle through papers as he told her what a wise investment the pharmacist’s house would be. Her father had bought and sold plenty of real estate in his life, and he could be quite persuasive on financial matters. In fact, as she listened to him, she found herself thinking that maybe the pharmacist’s house was indeed the way to go. On the verge of saying she’d take a look, she stopped herself. Sam eventually wore everyone down. This time he wouldn’t prevail.

“Dad, just give me an answer on the cottage. I don’t feel like sitting here while you turn everything upside down. Lil said I could move in—”

“Hold on a minute.” He stopped to examine a piece of paper. “Asthma Foundation holding some fancy-schmancy conference in L.A. Waste of time and money. What they should do—”

“I don’t give a damn what they should do.” In one move Ava scooped up all his papers and shoved them back in the bag. “I want Grandma’s cottage.”

“How are you going to pay for it?”

“I have money.” She felt her face color. She knew, as her father certainly did, that she had money from Rob’s insurance and in her trust fund. Although work was picking up, her commissions were by no means steady and she barely scraped by on what she made.

“Big commission?”

“Dammit, Dad, why do you have to make everything so difficult? The place is empty, I could move in tonight and rent it until the buy closes.” She saw him wavering. “Come on. I really want the cottage.”

“A lesson in life,” her father said, “is that we don’t always get what we want.”

The intercom on his desk buzzed to indicate a patient was waiting. “I’ll let you know,” he said. “I might decide to tear the place down.”

Ava left, slamming the door behind her, and walked back down the hill into town. He’d let her have the place, she knew that, but not before he’d made a huge and unnecessary production of it. Not so long ago she’d loved him so unreservedly it frightened her. Lately everything he did irritated her. And then she’d feel guilty. Guilt and irritation, an endless seesaw. And the irony was that all he was doing, all he’d ever done, was be himself. How her mother had stood it for forty years, she had no idea.

CHAPTER THREE

“DR. SAM?” The waitress at the Beehive smiled at Scott. “No, haven’t seen him this morning. Kind of early yet. He doesn’t usually come in till later.”

Scott glanced at his watch. Lynsky had said eight-thirty, and it was now nearly nine. He ordered coffee and decided to give the doctor another fifteen minutes. The check Lynsky had given him the day before was still on his desk, but Ellie had asked him again about the school trip to Spain. When he called her tonight, it would be terrific to tell her she could go.

“Here you are.” The waitress set a cup down in front of him. “The thing with Dr. Sam is, you never know from one minute to the next what he’s going to do.” She chuckled. “Just part of the guy’s charm, I guess.”

By nine-fifteen, the doctor still hadn’t arrived, and Scott walked back to the Argonaut and began writing a piece about an upcoming fishing tournament. He’d just finished it when his phone rang.

“You can run but you can’t hide,” Mark, his former colleague from the Times said. “Listen, Carolyn and I had a big bust-up—”

“Jeez, let me alert the national media.” Scott’s younger sister, Carolyn had been dating Mark for a year, most of it marked by big bust-ups. The surprise was that they’d even gotten together in the first place. Carolyn, whose favorite color was black, was deep into the club scene. Mark, when he wasn’t chasing a story or reading a book, was writing a police-procedural novel, which he hoped to sell for enough money to allow him to leave the Times. He was an introvert; Carolyn craved excitement. They fought about everything. “So what was it this time? She got a tattoo you didn’t like?”

“Close. She’s dyed her hair orange. God, I tell you. I thought burgundy was bad. Listen, I could use a change of scenery. Feel like having a house guest for a day or so?”

MARK CAUGHT THE ten-fifteen Catalina Express from Long Beach, and Scott met him at the pier; by noon, they were eating fried fish and chips at a white plastic table on the patio of the Casino Dock Café, looking out at a scene that Ava might have painted. To their left the terra-cotta roof of the Casino; below them Avalon’s version of a traffic jam—kayaks, dinghies and fishing boats, leaving, arriving, or just tooling around.

“Well, sure, I’d rather be stuck in traffic on the Golden State Freeway, stressed out because I was late for the mayor’s press briefing.” Scott emptied the rest of a pitcher of beer into their glasses. “I mean, this is pretty damn hard to take.”

It was all impossibly picturesque. The wheeling gulls, the sparkling blue ocean and, just for a touch of color, a chugging red Harbor Patrol boat. So beautiful that, although he couldn’t drop the note of mockery when he spoke to Mark about his new life, he suspected deep down that he’d already succumbed to the island’s legendary spell. Now if he could just work things out with Ellie.

“So has your brain turned to mush yet?” Mark asked. “I mean, this is idyllic and all that, but…where’s the grit?”

“It’s everywhere,” Scott said. “Garden club chicanery. A tourist in a gorilla suit terrorizing women on the pier. Graffiti-covered golf carts outside Von’s. Lobster poaching. I tell you, I can’t keep up with it.”

“Seriously.”

Scott drank some beer, pushed his chair back from the table and thought about Sam Lynsky’s proposal. Any number of reasons could have prevented the doctor from keeping their appointment, but he was beginning to wonder if Lynsky might just have been spewing a bunch of hot air. He frowned down at the food on his plate and decided to run the whole thing past Mark.

“A few months before I came here, a woman drowned, or at least it looked like a drowning, out on the bay,” he said. “Her husband’s family is old and well connected—at one time they practically owned Catalina. The husband is a pediatrician to just about every kid on the island. Eccentric, but the town practically worships him. I’ve never heard a critical word.”

Mark grinned. “And God knows, you’ve tried to find one.”

“That’s the old me,” he said. “The new me yearns for truth, justice, beauty and goodness. Not necessarily in that order.” A joke, so he’d seem less serious about it than he really was. It came easy, the role of cynical observer. “Anyway, this is apparently a golden family. Beautiful daughters—twins. One’s a local artist. The other one manages a riding stable on the other side of the island.”

Mark’s grin broadened. “Available?”

Scott looked at him. “The artist’s engaged. I don’t know about the other one. The artist’s—” he hesitated “—a princess. High-strung, high-maintenance. Some poor guy’s locked himself into a lifetime of trouble. Kind of like Laura, only with money.”

“I take it you’ve met her.”

“Yep. And immediately got off on the wrong foot.” He shook his head, remembering. “Anyway, moving on, Lynsky and his wife had gone for a sail around the island. While Lynsky was taking a nap belowdecks, his wife apparently fell overboard.”

“And the husband didn’t hear anything?”

“He says he woke up and found her gone. There was a massive search, but the body hasn’t been found. All the usual angles were checked out. No recent insurance policies, no domestic disharmony. Nothing to suggest it was anything but an accident.”

Mark drank some beer. “And?”

“I don’t know. There’s something about Lynsky. A little too jocular when he talks about his wife, maybe. Which wouldn’t matter, except he’s asked me to write his family history.” A waitress in red shorts dropped a check on the table, smiled and sashayed off. Scott watched until she’d disappeared into the restaurant. “He’s offered me access to his wife’s papers. Diaries, letters, that sort of thing. Offered me more to write it than I made in a year at the Times, and frankly, I could use the money.”

“So…what? You’re conflicted?”

“Kind of. Maybe it’s all this.” He nodded out at the sparkling bay. “Okay, maybe I’m just perverse. Maybe there’s something about perfection I can’t deal with, but I just have this gut feeling that there’s something…ugly beneath the surface.”

His expression skeptical, Mark grabbed the check from under Scott’s credit card. “Too much time on your hands, pal. It doesn’t sound like anything to me. If no-one else sees anything suspicious about it, I wouldn’t go around turning over rocks. Take the money and do the damn book. You’re over here in paradise. Don’t screw with it.”

“DAD’S JUST DOING his power trip,” Ingrid said after she’d called Ava to find out what was happening with the cottage and learned that Sam still hadn’t decided about selling it. “What you need to do is pretend you don’t want it, then he’ll lose interest because he doesn’t have anything to hold over you.”

“I know.” Ava was sitting at the worktable in her studio, doing what she’d done every day for the past two months—putting in time without actually producing anything. Hours passed spent in blank staring. And then at night, the dreams. “I just hate playing his damn game. Why is it so hard for him to understand that the cottage might help me get myself together?”

“He understands okay. That’s the whole point. But what you need is less important to him than his power trip.”

Ava wiped her forehead with the back of her hand. It disturbed her that Ingrid could make their father sound so Machiavellian. To anyone but Ingrid she’d vigorously defend him and, even to Ingrid, her first inclination was always to rush to his defense, but Ingrid’s words were like moths nibbling away at the fabric of what she believed her life to be. Holes kept appearing. She’d patch them with denial, weave the cloth together with words and smiles until no one else could see the holes, but she knew they were there. I’m not happy, Ava. I haven’t been for some time.

“Maybe I’ll just tell him I’ve found something else.” She leafed through a book of sketches, searching for inspiration. When she looked up, Scott Campbell was standing in the doorway. “I’ve got to go,” she told Ingrid. “I’ll call you later.”

“Hi.” Scott hadn’t moved from the doorway. “I didn’t realize this was your studio. I was just walking by and I saw you working.”

“Trying to work.”

“Am I interrupting?”

“Not really.” She got up from the stool and then couldn’t think of what to do, so she sat back down again. Something about him made her feel awkward. Mostly, she suspected, because she’d always been drawn to the type. Average height and weight, a touch on the scrawny side, perhaps. Slightly bookish with his round rimless glasses and blue chambray shirt. Fine, even features. Curly dark hair. Quizzical, sardonic, probably given to brooding silences. Probably subscribed to the New York Times—delivery cost more in California, but the book supplement was worth it—preferred merlot to chardonnay, listened to NPR and thought American Beauty was a brilliant film. He really did look like Rob.

“Is it distracting working here?” he asked. “Being visible from the street?”

“I can usually block out distractions.” She glanced around the storefront studio she’d worked in for the past year. “When people see me working, they don’t just drop in.”

“I can leave.”

“I didn’t mean you.”

“Well, I know how it is to be interrupted in the middle of a thought.”

“I haven’t had a whole lot of thoughts lately.” Her face went warm. Why the hell had she said that? “About work, I mean. I’m…I’ve had other things on my mind. Actually, I’ll be moving soon. I’m buying my grandmother’s cottage and there’s a porch in the back that will make a perfect studio. I can just stumble out of bed and start working.”

“Pretty convenient,” he said.

He looked genuinely interested, as though she’d actually said something, not babbled like an idiot. She folded her arms, unfolded them. Stuck an elbow on the worktable, propped her head in her hand and tried to look bored. Better than looking flustered and awkward. Coffee. Did she have any? No. He had an athlete’s body. Not an ounce of fat. Unlike her own fleshy roll constricted now by the waistband of her jeans. Her hand was going numb.

“Anyway,” he said, “you asked yesterday if I had any questions and now I realize I do.”