Cathy took in Zee’s blotchy face. Normally she might have had to look up the location of a grave site, but Lilly Braedon’s headstone had been installed only yesterday, and Cathy had seen Lilly’s husband and kids come by to visit it as she was leaving last night. So sad, she thought, wondering what would have caused the young mother to make the leap from the Tobin Bridge into the Mystic River. She felt particularly sorry for the kids.
Cathy walked Zee to the door and pointed up the hill. “It’s right up there next to the pavilion,” she said. “Under that big oak tree.”
“Thanks so much,” Zee said.
Zee left her car by the office and carried the flower basket up the hill, stopping at one of the faucets to water it. When she reached the top of the hill, she took in the view. From here she could see all of Salem, from the Willows to the Gables, to Shetland Park and the old mill buildings with their peaked rooflines that looked like a row of white tents. Beyond Shetland was the district called the Point, with the tenement houses where the mill workers had once lived-the Irish, the Italians, the French Canadians. The mills were long gone, but the housing remained. These days it was mostly Dominicans. Jessina and her son, Danny, lived in the Point.
Zee found Lilly’s gravestone. It was simple granite, a matte gray. On it just Lilly’s name, her date of birth, and the day she died. Zee found herself doing the math. Lilly was thirty-four, only two years older than Zee and the same age as Maureen had been when she committed suicide, but Lilly had seemed younger than Zee ever remembered her mother being. Certainly more naive, she thought, though it was odd to make that judgment, Maureen’s era would have almost certainly dictated a lesser sophistication than Lilly’s. Looking back on it now, Zee realized that it was the filter of a child’s vision that had clouded her perception. If she saw them next to each other, most likely they would have seemed the same. In many ways, of course, they already did seem the same, at least in Zee’s mind’s eye. It was barely possible to keep them separate while Lilly lived, but now their images were blending more and more.
Zee placed the basket on the flat base of Lilly’s grave. She hadn’t thought past doing it, but now she thought she ought to say a few words or, barring that, at least a silent prayer or something, but nothing came to her.
She tried her best to clear her head, to think about Lilly, but when she looked at the gravestone, she just wanted to cry again, which would have been appropriate except that she didn’t think she could stand to cry anymore. Her head ached so much from crying that she willed herself not to. Instead she walked up to the pavilion and sat looking out over the harbor toward Salem.
The House of the Seven Gables was partially visible from here. She tried to identify Finch’s house, but it was blocked by the boatyard across the street. The light from the Salem Harbor power plant blinked on and off, and for some reason, standing here, she thought for a moment of Gatsby standing and looking out at Daisy’s pier, though that light was green and not white, and lower to the ground and not on top of some coal-fired smokestack that people in both towns were trying their best to get rid of.
Zee fell asleep watching the harbor. It surprised her, first that she could sleep in the daytime-she had never been one to take naps-and second that she could sleep out in the open in a public place. The added confusion of an interrupted dream cycle meant that for a few seconds after she woke up, she had absolutely no idea where she was.
It had been the sound of an engine that had awakened her. A red truck was moving along the narrow lanes, driving first up one side of the hill and then down the other, taking each parallel street slowly, finally stopping and backing up when it came to Lilly’s grave. Adam didn’t turn off the engine before he got out of the truck. It idled and sputtered, creating a sound track that in retrospect would make what Zee saw him do seem more like a film than real life.
Adam walked over and stood for a long time in front of the grave. He looked at the headstone and then at the basket of flowers. Then he looked around to see if anyone was watching him. He picked up the flower basket Zee had just laid on the grave and heaved it. She watched as it arced in slow motion up and over the gravestones, finally landing on the pavement, where it smashed and scattered. Then Adam got into his truck and took off.
Zee was so shaken that she didn’t move for a while. She didn’t walk into the office and report the incident. Instead she got into her car and drove back to Salem. When she stopped for a red light, she dialed Mattei’s number and left a message.
“I know you told me to let it go, but I just saw something that made me think that Lilly Braedon’s death really wasn’t suicide. I need to talk to you.”
22
FOUR HOURS LATER MATTEI sat across the kitchen table from Zee. She’d had a hell of a time finding a parking place and ended up leaving her car way down on Congress Street at a four-story public garage, where she still had to wait almost twenty minutes for a space.
Zee had left her two phone messages that day, the first while she was still at the house, requesting a leave of absence so that she could take care of Finch, and the second two hours later, declaring that she didn’t think Lilly’s death was a suicide.
MATTEI HADN’T BOTHERED TO CALL Zee back. Instead she had gotten into her car and driven to Salem.
“I KNOW WHAT I SAW,” Zee insisted as they sat across the table from each other.
“I’m not disputing that,” Mattei said.
“He smashed the flower basket,” Zee said. “He’s dangerous.”
“We don’t know if he’s dangerous. He certainly seems angry.”
“We know he threatened her.”
“Yes,” Mattei said.
“You didn’t believe it before,” Zee said.
“I never said I didn’t believe it. It was the Marblehead police who were skeptical. And Lilly wasn’t exactly reliable. Or cooperative, for that matter.”
“She wasn’t suicidal,” Zee said.
“She jumped off a bridge.”
“What if he drove her to it?”
“What if he did?” Mattei asked.
“Shouldn’t we tell someone?”
“Tell them what?” Mattei asked.
Zee looked frustrated.
“Let’s think it through,” Mattei said. “There’s absolutely nothing anyone can do. You can’t arrest a person for driving someone to suicide. If you could, the jails would be full of husbands, wives, relatives, and employers. Isn’t it always somebody else’s fault?”
“Even so…” Zee said.
“She was bipolar,” Mattei said.
“I’m well aware of that,” Zee said.
“Well, you know from personal experience that this is how things sometimes end.”
“You mean my mother,” Zee said.
“Yes,” Mattei said.
“My mother was BP1. And unmedicated.”
“Medication doesn’t always work. Case in point, Lilly Braedon.”
“I would have known if Lilly was suicidal,” Zee said. Before Mattei had a chance to respond, she added, “I was thirteen when my mother died. And if it happened now, with my training, I would have seen the signs.”
Mattei was silent.
“And there’s something else,” Zee said.
“What’s that?”
“You didn’t think she was suicidal either,” Zee said.
“Now you’re telling me what I thought?”
