“What the hell?” he shouts. “You just rammed right into me!”
Roger Door tucks the flask under the passenger seat and climbs out of his truck to inspect the damage he did to the vehicle of the angry young man. His wife, Cecily, is going to clobber him. Roger has retired as a general contractor and now works solely as an odd-jobs man, but he is selective with his clients and therefore spends most of his time either fishing in his thirteen-foot Whaler or golfing with Smitty at Farm Neck. And drinking, of course—but only during the day. Roger Door is routinely in bed by eight thirty.
Tad also gets out to inspect the damage and finds a dent the size of Quitsa Pond in the side panel of his F-250. He feels heat rising from the soles of his feet, and his hands start to itch. He wants to punch the old man right in the face—break his nose, bust open his lip. Tad feels about his truck the way most people feel about their children.
“Sorry about that,” Roger says. He steps closer to Tad and lowers his voice. “Think we can work something out without getting insurance involved?”
“Like hell,” Tad says. He has lived on the island for seven years and has seen the likes of Roger Door way too often—old salts who think they can say anything and do anything because one of their ancestors was banging the original Martha-who-owned-the-vineyard. “I’m calling the police.”
Roger Door’s shoulders slump. Cecily will have his head on a platter.
A little while later, Sergeant Drew Truman is on the scene, filing an accident report. He knows Roger Door from the Rotary Club, which is a point in Roger’s favor, although it seems like Roger might be at fault.
“Give him a Breathalyzer!” Tad says. “He’s been drinking.”
“I beg your pardon, young man,” Roger says.
“I have to get back to work!” Tad says, pointing to the back of his pickup, which is filled with two-by-fours and sheets of plywood. “I’m on a deadline.”
Is it possible that Roger Door has been drinking? Drew wonders. It’s only eleven o’clock in the morning. The younger gentleman is calling for a Breathalyzer, but it comes across as though he’s telling Drew how to do his job, at which Drew takes umbrage. He decides just to give Roger Door a moving violation and puts him at fault for the accident. Their insurance companies can battle it out.
In an attempt to make nice with the hotheaded Irish guy—Drew realizes he’s met him once before, at the bar at Sharky’s, where he was watching soccer and screaming at the TV—he says, “Where are you working?”
“Daggett Avenue,” Tad says. He pulls his phone out of his back pocket and checks the time. “This bleeder cost me forty-five minutes I don’t have, and now I’m looking at trying to get back to Tisbury in lunchtime traffic.”
Drew nods sympathetically. Traffic is every Vineyarder’s favorite thing to complain about, followed closely by mopeds and taxi drivers, which are really just subcategories of traffic.
“Daggett Avenue?” Roger Door says. Despite enjoying half a flask (at least) of Bushmills, he experiences a moment of lucidity. “Are you the one working on Billy Frost’s house?”
Tad stares at the old man.
“Billy Frost’s house?” Just hearing the name Frost causes Sergeant Drew Truman to suffer chest pain. He had fallen for Harper Frost, but what a fool he had been! Just last week, Drew had pulled over a Rooster Express truck for making an illegal U-turn on Meetinghouse Road. Drew had entertained the faintest hope that he would find Harper driving, but it had been Rooster himself. He told Drew that he had fired Harper and that she had left island.
Drew studies Tad. “Are you working on Billy Frost’s house?”
Tad shrugs. “Does it matter? Or can I go?”
“Just answer the question, please, sir,” Drew says, though he knows the question is out of bounds. “Are you working on Billy Frost’s house?”
Tad has promised Franklin that he will keep his mouth shut about the job, but he isn’t about to lie to an officer of the law, and this guy, he knows, is a hometown hero and a member of one of the most prominent families in Oak Bluffs. He probably has the power to make Tad’s life miserable in ways Tad can’t even imagine. Besides, he needs to get out of there. His poor truck!
“Yeah,” Tad says.
“And who is it you work for?” Drew asks, though suddenly he knows the answer because they talked about it at the bar at Sharky’s. He works for… for…
Tad knows this is it—the end of Franklin’s fantasy that he could work on Billy Frost’s house and have a wild-ass love affair with Harper Frost’s twin sister, Tabitha, without anyone finding out about it. Oh, well, Tad thinks.
“Franklin Phelps,” Tad says.
Since Drew broke up with Harper, he has only one confidant: Chief Oberg. The chief has been very patient and nurturing with his sergeant because Drew Truman is a straight arrow with unimpeachable character and integrity, and with the current troubling atmosphere surrounding law enforcement, Chief Oberg has devoted himself to focusing on the cops he considers his shining stars. When Drew gets back to the station, he finds Chief Oberg in the break room eating kale salad out of a Tupperware container. He tells the chief about the accident, then he reveals that Franklin Phelps is working on Billy Frost’s house.
“That’s weird, right? Because Harper was having an affair with Dr. Zimmer, and Dr. Zimmer is married to Sadie, who is Franklin Phelps’s sister. That’s a conflict of interest, right?”
Chief Oberg stabs a piece of kale. His wife, JoAnn, is on a diet, and when JoAnn is on a diet, the whole house is on a diet. After his shift, he’s going to stop at Shiretown Meats for an Italian sub with extra hot peppers. “It’s the Vineyard, Drew,” the chief says. “Everything here is a conflict of interest.”
He says this to placate his young colleague, and Drew thanks him dutifully and wanders away. But the person who does agree with Drew that it’s a conflict of interest is Shirley Sparks, Chief Oberg’s administrative assistant, whose desk is right outside the break room. Shirley is in the Excellent Point book group with Franklin and Sadie’s mother, Lydia Phelps, and she finds it interesting—indeed, startling—that Franklin is working on the house of the father of the woman who betrayed his sister. She wonders if Lydia knows about this. If she does know about it, she must need someone to talk to. And if she doesn’t know about it, she should.
Shirley calls Lydia.
AINSLEY