Chapter 5.

5.

Down on the beach, there were three EMTs and a half dozen police officers working side by side with members of Osprey Cove’s security team. I watched from a distance, standing in the shade of the trees and observing their work. Apart from taking lots of photographs, no one seemed to be doing all that much. There was a stretcher in the sand, lying parallel to Gwendolyn’s body, and the EMTs appeared to be deliberating the best way to get her on it.

Errol Gardner exited the back door of the lodge and walked over to me. He was holding an insulated mug of coffee and offered to bring me some but I declined.

“How’s Aidan?” I asked.

“Oh, he’s fine. He thinks this whole thing was basically inevitable. Said he always worried Gwendolyn was heading down this road.”

“I don’t think she overdosed,” I said. “I talked to her last night. She was completely sober.”

“I know, Frank. You mentioned that earlier. We’ll just have to see what the medical examiner says. But it’ll be well into next week before they issue a report.”

I spotted Gerry and Hugo standing among the medics and the police officers. They were all engaged in easy, relaxed conversation; they could have been discussing the Red Sox.

“It’s a shame about the wedding,” I said. “Have you talked to the kids about rescheduling?”

“No one’s rescheduling anything. The kids want to move ahead and so do I. And so should you. As soon as the medics clear out, we’re going to proceed with the hike. Get everyone up to Cormorant Point.” He seemed to register my tortured posture. “Though I’m not sure you’re up for the walk, Frank. You look a little stiff.”

I told him how I’d hurt my back and he winced in sympathy. Errol mentioned that the camp clinic had a heating pad and promised to have it sent over to my cottage. But first, he explained, he needed to talk to the police and encourage them to hurry things along.

I watched him march down to the beach and approach the police like he had every right to be there. I couldn’t hear their conversation, but the officers seemed to be apologizing for taking so long.

Of course, Mr. Gardner.

We’ll be finished in a few minutes, sir.

And then we promise we’ll be out of your hair.

There were still plenty of guests hanging around the back of the lodge, but no one was bothering to interview them. The scene on the beach looked more like a coffee break than an actual police investigation. I was still watching it all in disbelief when my phone chirped with an incoming text. It was a message from Vicky, replying to my text from the previous afternoon:

Frank, I’ve read your toast and I really think you nailed it. Your writing is warm and heartfelt and there’s not a single word I would change. I guarantee people are going to love it. Especially Maggie. You got this!! ??Vicky

She usually worked noon to closing and it was only ten-thirty, so I knew I had a good chance of catching her at home. I ducked into the trees for some privacy and dialed her cell.

“Hey, Frank! I just sent you a text!”

“I know. I just read it.”

“Is everything okay?”

“No, not really. I’m sorry to keep bothering you—”

“What’s the matter?”

I peered through the trees to the main lawn. The medics had lifted the stretcher off the ground, and now they were carrying Gwendolyn’s body up the lawn to Osprey Lodge. “A woman died last night.”

“Oh, no—”

“They’re carrying away the body and then we’re all going on a picnic. Except Aidan’s mother, because she won’t come out of her bedroom. So she missed all the skinny-dipping and microdosing last night. And did I mention all the clocks here are fifteen minutes fast?”

I could hear Vicky settling into a chair and popping the tab on a can of Diet Coke. “Frank, slow down. I think you should start from the beginning. Walk me back to yesterday afternoon. Tell me what’s going on.”

I walked her back even further—to Wednesday night, right after she cut my hair, when I came home to find the photo of Aidan Gardner and Dawn Taggart in my mailbox. I told Vicky about Hugo and the privacy docs and Catherine’s mysterious illness, about Gerry Levinson and his absurdly young wife and Gwendolyn’s promise to tell me everything, just hours before she turned up dead.

“I feel like I’m in the twilight zone. Everywhere I look, there’s all kinds of crazy stuff, but people keep saying it’s totally normal. I can’t tell left from right anymore.”

“What about Tammy? What’s she think?”

“She’s fallen down the rabbit hole. She’s drank a whole big pitcher of crazy Kool-Aid and I can’t talk to her.”

“Then you need to trust your instincts. What’s your gut telling you?”

I felt awful giving voice to my suspicions, but the words rang true as soon as they left my mouth. “I think Aidan did something to these girls: Dawn Taggart and Gwendolyn. I think my daughter is too lovesick to realize what’s going on. And I think Errol Gardner is cleaning up his son’s mess, because that’s what rich parents do.”

“Not just the rich ones,” Vicky said.

“What’s that mean?”

“I’m speaking from experience, Frank. When my daughter, Janet, started getting into trouble, I made a thousand excuses for her. ‘Oh, she doesn’t have a drug problem. She’s just experimenting. She’s just exploring her wild side.’ I didn’t want to see the truth. And by the time I admitted she had a problem, it was too late.”

I felt awful for making her dredge up all these terrible memories. She’d told me more than once that losing Janet was the worst thing that ever happened to her. “I’m sorry, Vicky.”

“It’s fine, Frank. I’ll tell you something I learned from hard experience: Every parent’s an unreliable narrator. We think we know our kids better than anyone. But none of us can see them objectively. Not even a visionary like Errol Gardner. Your son-in-law sounds like Sam Bankman-Fried.”

“Who?”

“The cryptocurrency kid? Don’t you read the news?”

“I don’t read about crypto. All that stuff’s bullshit.”

“Well, exactly, but Sam Bankman-Fried made a fortune off it. He stole billions from his customers. The judge gave him twenty-five years in prison, but the real kicker was his parents. They’re both professors at Stanford Law. They know the rules of finance better than anyone. But they insisted their son was innocent. Claimed he never did anything wrong. Because they couldn’t see him clearly. It’s a willful kind of blindness, Frank, and I was the exact same way with Janet.”

She offered to make a call to her son, the one who worked for the Wall Street Journal , but I didn’t want to do or say anything that might prompt an investigation. “They’re trying to keep this quiet.”

“You realize that sounds terrible, right?”

I could hear people behind me on the trail, approaching from the eastern cottages. “I gotta go, Vick.”

“What are you going to do?”

“I’ve got an idea, but I’m not sure it’ll work.”

“Be careful, Frank. If you keep snooping around, you might get in over your head.”

“I’m already in over my head,” I reminded her. “Tomorrow at three o’clock, Maggie’s supposed to marry this guy.”