“Some of it’s Linda Beecham’s fault,” Bram Winder said. “You wouldn’t think a little weekly paper like the Home News would have much impact, especially since everybody here takes the Boston Globe, but it does. And she’s been treating this whole thing, the film thing, I mean, as if it doesn’t exist. If she’d run a few articles about the dangers posed by the island being full of strangers and, you know, that kind of thing, we’d probably have gotten them to put on a few guys and we wouldn’t be in this mess now.”
“He means in the mess of not having enough in the way of manpower to handle a murder investigation,” Clara Walsh said. She pointed to the manila envelopes in Gregor’s hands. “That’s the best we could do, and it isn’t very good.”
“But the state police are helping, aren’t they?” Gregor said. “I’m sure Stewart said something about that.”
“The state police have a charter,” Clara Walsh said carefully, “and that charter specif cally forbids them from interfering in what should be a municipality’s jurisdiction. But yes, they’re helping, they just have to be careful. And of course the commonwealth has crime labs that we can use, and we have used them. It’s just—not adequate, if you see what I mean. It’s not what I’d like it to be.”
Gregor made a noncommittal noise. Bram Winder gestured down the dock. “I’ve got a car waiting,” he said. “I can take you to the inn to clean up before the press conference, but I was thinking, Clara and I were thinking, that since it’s on the way, you might want to stop at the beach and look at the crime scene. Not really investigate it or anything, you know. I know you’d need to come back and be more thorough. But we thought, ah, to—”
“To get the lay of the land,” Clara Walsh said helpfully.
Gregor had a feeling that the “lay of the land” was going to be nothing but snow, but he also thought that getting a look at it might be a good idea. He didn’t know why, but he felt more than a little reluctant to go to the Oscartown Inn and check in. For one thing, he would have to call Bennis, and he wasn’t ready to call Bennis yet.
“All right,” he said. “You drive, I’ll get the lay of the land.”
2
Jerry Young was waiting for them on the side of the road that ran along the beach on the other side of Oscartown from the place where the ferry docked, dressed in a high-waisted dark blue police uniform that looked as if it had been copied from a television show. If Gregor had had to guess, he would have said that Jerry Young was not much more than just past his twenty-first birthday. The only reason he wouldn’t have guessed much younger than that was because of the badge. Gregor didn’t think that even in as casual a place as Margaret’s Harbor they would hire a police officer too young to buy the drinks he’d have to take away from the kids he caught with fake IDs. The beach road was actually named Holcomb Avenue, and it wasn’t anything like on the way from the ferry to the Oscartown Inn. Gregor was fairly sure they had passed the inn as they came across town, but they’d never gotten to Main Street, so he wasn’t sure. He had seen not much of anything but stretch after stretch of New Englandy clapboard and shingle houses, packed as closely together as they would have been in the cheapest suburbs of Cleveland or Detroit. Some of the houses on those tiny lots were huge, filling their limited spaces as compactly as if they’d oozed in and then hardened. Margaret’s Harbor might be a vacation enclave for Old Money, but unlike some of the other enclaves Gregor could think of—say, for instance, Newport—this one was an enclave for Old Money that didn’t mind living as if it were in Levittown. Clara Walsh saw the expression on his face and coughed.
“It’s Oscartown,” she said. “Everybody wants to be in Oscartown. Presidents have been here. Kennedys have been here.”
Gregor looked up and saw a towering Victorian pile rising up at the end of the beach. “What’s that?” he asked.
Bram Winder laughed. “That’s the Point. It’s the Rhode family house on the island. They got here before all these other people did.”
The ferry. The beach. The Point. Gregor was fairly sure that they were stretched out along a single line, albeit a snaky one. He didn’t think it was possible that Oscartown had two ocean frontages. The island was bigger than that. There would be other towns. He looked straight ahead as they began to pull in next to Jerry Young. There was a lot of wind. It was making the policeman’s cap jiggle up and down.