trophies. And if there was anything in the muck of the lagoon, it could stay there until it turned into fossils.
“Besides,” I told her, “who’d drink eighty-year-old booze?”
“You see who comes in this place?” she said, nodding toward the fishermen, now crowded around a pair of tables pulled together in the center of the room, drinking bottled beer and shoving handfuls of fried clams into their mouths.
“If I ever find anything, I’ll turn it over to you. For the sake of history or commerce, whatever your mood at the time.”
When Hodges came back he still had Robbie Milhouser’s old man on his mind.
“You know he was a Town Trustee for a while,” he told me, settling in with his second bourbon on the rocks. “Proof that politics is the last refuge of scoundrels.”
“I thought that was patriotism.”
“The Town had its share of crooks in those days. Not that there was much to steal. Mostly a little skim here and there and a chance to get out of parking tickets. Milhouser still managed to get caught scamming the highway department. I think it was over road salt. I don’t remember the details, but he had to quit the board and was lucky to stay out of jail. Still alive, you know. At least as of a month or two ago. Saw him in the hardware store. All grins and handshakes. Good old Jeff Milhouser.”
“Jeff. Didn’t remember his first name.”
“Short for Jefferson. Folks had a lot of money. Or used to. Lost it in the Depression or something. Had the Ivy League airs. Used to see that a lot around here when the place was full of Waspy old money. Not so much anymore.”
“You knew this guy?” I said.
“Only for a while. When I was working for him at the Esso station out on County Road 39.”
“That’s where I worked for him.”
“Get out of here. Don’t remember you. What was it, early sixties?” Hodges asked.
“I was there a little later. You wouldn’t have seen me anyway. Always had my head stuffed in an engine compartment. You’re right, though, now that you mention it. Milhouser always wore a pinstriped button-down shirt. And boots from L.L. Bean, back when New England swells were the only ones who thought that stuff was hip.”
I listened to him talk while I ate another plate of fish he’d brought out for me, which was nicely seasoned and well cooked, though like all Hodges’s preparations, unidentifiable. You could ask him what it was, but it wasn’t worth the trouble. You never got a straight answer.
“So we’re agreeing Jeff Milhouser was a dickhead,” he said in summary.
“We are. Him and his offspring.”
“Don’t know the kid,” said Hodges. “Not that I know of, anyway.”
“He’s been building houses around Noyac and North Sea. His crew’s from Up Island.”
“They might be a little too refined for the Pequot.”
“Better to stay clear of that bunch. You don’t need the trouble,” I said.
“Can’t be worse than a crew of fishermen after a few weeks at sea. Anyway, we got equipment for that behind the bar.”
“They aren’t always men,” Dorothy interjected from across the room.
“Pardon me, I meant fisherpeople,” said Hodges. “She’s right, though. Some of those ladies are scarier than the men.”
After that we found ourselves diverted along some other long and circuitous conversational paths, which was the norm with Hodges. It was still early, but I was getting heavy with tiredness and iced Absolut, the hard labors of the day catching up with me. I told Hodges I had to call it quits.
“I’ll go dig up the check,” he said, starting to stand up, and then paused and sat back down.
“Now I remember,” he said. “It wasn’t the road-salt scam that got Milhouser in all that trouble. It was bank fraud. Damn, I can’t believe I’m remembering this.” He nodded to himself as he chewed over the memory, his face furrowed with concentration. I was almost too tired to take the bait, but I wasn’t getting the check without letting him spill the story.
“Gee, Hodges, what was that fraud all about?” I asked.
“What he did was move a bunch of Town money into one of his own accounts, just long enough to collateralize a loan, then moved it all back out again. This took place inside the same bank, so it must have looked easy to Milhouser, though of course the genius never thought anybody’d notice the transactions. Could have been real trouble, but he got probation on a plea of irreconcilable stupidity.”
“Which bank was this?” I asked.
“Right there on Main Street. Don’t remember the name.”
“Harbor Trust?” I asked him. It was the bank where Amanda used to work and her husband Roy was the manager.
“I think it was some savings and loan. Local deal. They all disappeared a while ago.”
Dorothy saved me from more talk about the Milhousers by bringing me the check and gently shooing her father back into the kitchen. I got out of there and headed back to the tip of Oak Point.
I drove past my house and up to Amanda’s. The Audi was gone and her house was blacked out, leaving only my post lamp to light our two properties. I walked up to the door anyway and rang the bell. After waiting a minute, I went around to a side window and opened it up. I knew about the missing lock from when the place was owned by an old lady named Regina Broadhurst. I knew about it because she was always on my ass to fix it.
I found my way to Amanda’s bedroom and turned on the light. Her suitcase was missing from the closet. The hair dryer and her makeup bag were gone from the bathroom.
The only thing that could nail it down more was a note that said, “I have left for the night.”
When I got back to my cottage Eddie was waiting on the little porch off the side door. My plan had been to go right to bed without a last cigarette or nightcap, but now I decided on both. Eddie went with me out to the Adirondack chairs. The surface of the Little Peconic was racing toward Sag Harbor before a stiff westerly pouring in through the slot between Robbins Island and Cow Neck. The air was clear enough to turn the lights on the opposite shore into sharp little pinpricks randomly arrayed along the blackened horizon.
I thought drinking out on the lawn would force me into bed, but it had the opposite effect. So instead I went and put on my running shoes. Eddie looked skeptical, so I stowed him in the house and headed off along Bay Edge Drive. The only car to pass me was a BMW roadster going far too fast for the sandy rutted road surface. It would have hit me if I hadn’t jumped out of the way. But I was never in any danger.
I’d been running on that road since time began, and every turn and roll inked into my memory so indelibly I could run it mindless and blind, sure in the embrace of invulnerable night.
FOUR
THE NEXT MORNING I was four stories above the Atlantic Ocean trimming out Joshua Edelstein’s widow’s walk, toe-nailing the turned spindles and attaching custom molding under the handrails, and occasionally stopping to watch the offshore breeze push the swells up into little cliffs before breaking into clean, tubular curls, throwing off plumes of spray lit up by the sun rising over the eastern horizon.
From that vantage point you could see the estate section of Southampton Village, from Wickapogue to the Gracefield Tennis Club. Since it was the beginning of April most of the big houses were unoccupied, though busy with painters, cleaners, landscapers and crews working on irrigation systems.
It felt good to be working outside in the early morning sun, even though the breeze was the same northwesterly that had been icing down Long Island for the last four months. If you kept moving you could pretend it wasn’t as cold as it really was.
Frank Entwhistle had built Joshua a big house, over 10,000 square feet, so it took a lot of moldings, baseboards, and window and door trim to fill it up. I didn’t have to install it all myself; Frank could bring in a whole finish crew for a job this big. I just had to do my part and stay clear of Frank’s efforts to promote me to foreman of the crew. I’d already done my bit in management, once running a corporate division of about four thousand people. None of them were finish carpenters, as far as I knew, but the experience had blunted my enthusiasm for management.
I liked Joshua Edelstein, but I didn’t know why he wanted a house this big, though maybe I would if I could
