Kitabı oku: «Sidney Sheldon’s The Tides of Memory», sayfa 2

It took a few moments for Charles to realize that people on the beach were waving at him too. Hadn’t they ever seen a yacht tender before? Or maybe they’d never seen one as powerful as the Celeste’s.

By the time he saw the rowboat, and realized the danger, he was seconds away from impact. Crouched inside, two teenage boys huddled together in terror. Charles caught the look of pure panic on their faces as he hurtled toward them, and felt sick. He was close enough now to see the whites of their eyes and their desperate, pleading expressions.

Jesus Christ.

He lunged for the wheel.

THE TWO LIFEGUARDS LOOKED AT EACH other.

“Holy shit.”

“He’s gonna hit them, isn’t he?”

Grabbing their floats, they ran into the water.

TONI WATCHED IN HORROR AS THE second tender sped toward the rowboat. As it got closer, her horror intensified. Is that …Charles? What the hell is he doing?

She opened her mouth to scream, to warn him, but no sound came out. Thanks to Billy’s antics, she’d already shouted herself hoarse. That’s when she realized with chilling finality: Those kids are going to die.

DEEP BENEATH THE WAVES, BILLY HAMLIN plucked a fifth oyster shell from the sand. It was cool and peaceful down here, and quite beautiful with the sun shining its dappled rays through the water, casting ethereal, dancing shadows across the bed.

The chances of him finding a pea-size pearl were almost nil. But Billy was enjoying showing off for Toni and the crowd on the beach. He felt at home in the water, confident and strong. In the real world he might be Charles Braemar Murphy’s inferior. But not here, in the wild freedom of the ocean. Here, he was a king.

Grabbing the oyster tightly in his hand, he began to swim back up toward the light.

WRENCHING THE WHEEL TO THE RIGHT with all his strength, Charles Braemar Murphy closed his eyes. The tender banked so sharply, it almost capsized. Clinging on for dear life, Charles heard screams ringing in his ears. Was it the boys’ terror he was hearing, or his own? He couldn’t tell. Salt spray doused him, lashing his face like a razor. The tender was still moving at a terrific speed.

How had it happened so quickly, the shift from happiness to disaster? Only seconds ago he’d been deeply, profoundly happy. And now …

Heart pounding, teeth clenched, Charles Braemar Murphy braced himself for the blow.

THE CROWD ON THE BEACH WATCHED openmouthed as the tender careered uncontrollably to the right, farther into the shipping lanes.

At first the wake was so huge and the spray so high it was impossible to make out what had happened to the rowboat. But at last it emerged, bobbing wildly but still intact. Two boys could be seen standing inside, waving their arms frantically for rescue.

The relief was overwhelming. People cheered and cried and jumped up and down, hugging one another.

They made it! He missed.

Then, somewhere among them, a lone voice screamed.

“Swimmer!”

FOR TONI GILLETTI, IT ALL HAPPENED in slow motion.

She saw Charles swerve. Saw him miss the rowboat by inches. For a split second she felt relief, so powerful it made her nauseous. But then Billy Hamlin shot up out of the water like a tornado, directly in the tender’s path. Even if Charles had seen him, there was no way he could have stopped.

The last thing Toni saw was the look of shock on Billy’s handsome face. Then the tender cut off her view.

Someone on the beach screamed.

Charles cut the engine and the tender sputtered to a halt.

Billy Hamlin was gone.

CHAPTER TWO

CHARLES BRAEMAR MURPHY WAS IN SHOCK. Slumped on the bench at the back of the tender, shivering, he stared at the water. It was calm now, silvery and still like glass.

The lifeguards splashed around, searching for Billy, taking turns plunging beneath the surface.

Nothing.

On the beach, people were crying. The boys in the rowboat had made it safely to shore, tearful after their own ordeal and confused by what was going on. In the shallows, the little Camp Williams boys from Toni’s group huddled together nervously, frightened by the adults’ panic.

In a complete daze, Toni swam back to them. Someone must have called for help, because the coast-guard officers were arriving from all sides, along with tenders from the other yachts moored offshore.

“Toni?” A shivering Graydon Hammond clung to Toni’s leg.

“Not now, Graydon,” she murmured automatically, her eyes still fixed on the point in the water where she’d last seen Billy.

He can’t be dead. He was there, just seconds ago. Please, God, please don’t let him be dead, just because he was playing the fool for me.

“Toni?”

She was about to comfort Graydon when she saw it. About fifty yards farther out to sea than the point where Toni had been looking, a dazed swimmer bobbed to the surface.

“There!” she screamed at the lifeguards, waving her arms hysterically. “Over there!”

She needn’t have bothered. As one, the rescue boats converged on Billy, scooping him out of the water. Watching from his speedboat, Charles Braemar Murphy finally broke down in sobs.

It was over. The nightmare was over.

LESS THAN A MINUTE LATER BILLY was on the beach, smiling through the pain as a paramedic bandaged his head wound. Several people came over to shake his hand and inform him (as if he needed telling) how lucky he was to be alive.

“It was all for her, you know,” he told his admirers, nodding at Toni, who was striding over toward him, an Amazonian goddess in her tiny bikini, with her long wet hair trailing magnificently behind her. “My princess needed a pea. What could I do? Her wish was my command.”

Toni, however, was not in romantic mood.

“You goddamn fool!” she screamed at Billy. “You could have been killed! I thought you’d drowned.”

“Would you have missed me?” Billy pouted.

“Oh, grow up. What happened out there wasn’t funny, Billy. Poor Charles is in pieces. He thought he’d hit you. We all did.”

“ ‘Poor’ Charles?” Now it was Billy’s turn to get angry. “That dickhead was piloting his boat like a maniac. Didn’t you see how close he came to crashing into those poor kids in the rowboat?”

“They should never have been in the lanes,” said Toni. “And neither should you.”

Graydon Hammond had followed Toni out of the water and was tugging at her leg again, making whimpering noises.

“Graydon, please!” she snapped. “I’m talking to Billy.”

“But it’s important!” Graydon howled.

“Go ahead,” Billy said bitterly. “It’s clear you don’t give a damn about me. Go comfort Graydon. Or better yet, Charles. He’s the real victim here.”

“For God’s sake, Billy, of course I give a damn. Do you think I’d be so angry if I didn’t care about you? I thought … I thought I’d lost you.”

And to Toni Gilletti’s own surprise, she burst into tears.

Billy Hamlin put his arms around her. “Hey,” he whispered gently. “Don’t cry. I’m sorry I scared you. Please don’t cry.”

“Toniiiiiiiiiiiiii!” Graydon Hammond’s wails were getting louder. Reluctantly, Toni extricated herself from Billy’s embrace.

“What is it Graydon, honey?” she said more gently. “What’s the matter?”

The little boy looked up at her, his bottom lip quivering.

“It’s Nicholas.”

“Nicholas? Nicholas Handemeyer?”

Graydon nodded.

“What about him?”

Graydon Hammond burst into tears.

“He swam away. When you were watching Billy. He swam away and he never came back.”

CHAPTER THREE

IT WAS A QUARTER OF A mile back to Camp Williams from the beach, along a sandy path half overgrown with brambles. Toni’s legs were scratched raw as she ran, but she was oblivious to the pain and deaf to the plaintive cries of the children struggling to keep up.

“My God. What happened to you? Forget your clothes?”

Mary Lou Parker, pristine in her preppy uniform of khaki shorts, white-collared shirt, and docksiders, looked Toni up and down with distaste. That bikini was really too much, especially with kids around. Mary Lou couldn’t think what Charles Braemar Murphy saw in Toni Gilletti.

“Have you seen Nicholas? Nicholas Handemeyer?” Toni gasped. Belatedly Mary Louise clocked her distress and the muted sobbing of the children huddled behind her. They looked like they’d been to war. “Did he come back here?”

“No.”

Toni let out a wail.

“ I mean, I don’t know.” Mary Lou backtracked. “I haven’t seen him, but let me go ask the others.”

One by one the other counselors and Camp Williams faculty emerged from their various cabins. No one had seen Nicholas Handemeyer. But Toni shouldn’t panic.

He was bound to have gotten out of the water.

Little boys ran off sometimes.

He couldn’t be far.

A group of the boys, including Don Choate, who was a varsity swim star, set off for the beach to help the rescue efforts. Billy Hamlin and Charles Braemar Murphy had stayed to help the coast guard, while Toni took the children back to camp.

Toni stood uselessly, watching them go. Not sure what else to do, she escorted the other boys back to camp, got them changed into dry clothes, and prepared some food for them. Mary Lou Parker arrived to find Toni mindlessly chopping cucumbers and staring at the wall.

“I’ll take over here,” said Mary Lou kindly. She didn’t like Toni Gilletti, but everyone knew how fond Toni was of little Nicholas. You could see the misery in her eyes. “You go and clean up. I bet you he’ll be back by the time you’ve had a shower. He’s probably getting hungry by now.”

Walking back to her cabin, Toni tried to make herself believe what Mary Lou had said.

He’ll be back any minute.

He’s probably getting hungry.

Other thoughts, horrific thoughts, hovered ominously on the edge of her consciousness, clamoring to be let in. But Toni pushed them aside. First the kids in the rowboat. Then Billy. Now Nicholas. The afternoon had been one long roller coaster of terror and relief. But it would end happily. It had to.

When Toni saw Nicholas she would hug him and kiss him and tell him how sorry she was for allowing herself to be distracted by Billy. Tomorrow they would catch crabs together and play possum. They would build entire sand cities. Toni would not be hungover, or tired, or thinking about her love life. She would be with the children, with Nicholas, one hundred percent present.

She stopped at the door to her cabin.

The boys emerged from the beach path one by one. They walked with their heads down, in silence. Toni watched them, numb, aware of nothing but the distant lapping of the waves ringing in her ears.

In later years, she would dream about their faces:

Charles Braemar Murphy, her lover up until that day, ashen white and ghostly.

Don Choate, his lips set tight, fists clenched as he walked.

And at the rear, Billy Hamlin, his eyes swollen from crying.

Whoosh, whoosh, whoosh went the tide.

The boy’s corpse hung limp in Billy’s arms.

CHAPTER FOUR

“SO LET’S GET THIS STRAIGHT. WHEN did you first notice—first notice—that Nicholas was missing?”

Mrs. Martha Kramer cast her beady eyes from Toni Gilletti to Billy Hamlin. Both young people looked terrified. As well they might.

Martha Kramer had been running Camp Williams for twenty-two years now, first with her husband, John, and for the last nine years as a widow. Never, in all that time, had there been a single serious accident involving any of the boys in her care. Never. But now tragedy had struck. And it had struck on the watch of the carpenter’s son and the electronics millionaire’s daughter.

At only five feet tall, with perfectly coiffed gray hair and a pair of trademark pince-nez spectacles permanently suspended on a chain around her neck, Mrs. Kramer was considered a Kennebunkport institution. But her diminutive stature and soft-spoken, grandmotherly manner led many people to underestimate both her intellect and her business acumen. Camp Williams might sell itself as an old-fashioned, family-run retreat. But since her husband’s death, Mrs. Kramer had doubled the prices and started strictly vetting the boys she admitted, ensuring her reputation as the owner of the elite summer camp on the East Coast. Teenage labor was cheap, overheads were low. She’d even gotten a great deal on the carpentry for last year’s refurbishment project. Put simply, Mrs. Martha Kramer had been sitting on a cash cow. And these two irresponsible children had just slaughtered it.

“I told you, Mrs. Kramer. I had a concussion. Toni was looking after me. We thought all the kids were right there on the beach, until Graydon came over and said Nicholas was gone.”

Billy Hamlin, the boy, was doing all of the talking. The girl, Gilletti, normally a chatterbox of the worst order, was curiously mute. Perhaps it was shock? Or perhaps she was smart enough not to say anything that might incriminate her later. Something about her eyes made Mrs. Kramer uneasy. She’s thinking, the little minx. Weighing up her options.

Both Toni and Billy had gotten dressed since the beach, he in bell-bottoms and a Rolling Stones T-shirt, she in a floor-length skirt with tassels on the bottom and a turtleneck sweater that covered every inch of her skin. Again, the demure clothes were uncharacteristic of Theodore Gilletti’s wayward daughter. Martha Kramer’s eyes narrowed still further.

“And you raised the alarm right away?”

“Of course. The coast guard was already at the scene. I stayed to help them, and Toni came back here, just in case …”

Billy Hamlin let the sentence trail off. He looked at Toni, who looked at the floor.

“Miss Gilletti? Have you nothing to say?”

“If I had something to say, I’d have said it, okay?” Roused from her stupor like a sun-drunk rattlesnake, Toni suddenly lashed out. “Billy’s told you what happened. Why do you keep hammering at us?”

“Hammering at you?” Martha Kramer drew herself up to her full five feet and glowered at the spoiled teenager in front of her. “Miss Gilletti, a child is dead. Drowned. Do you understand? The police are on their way, as is the boy’s family. They are going to hammer at you until they know exactly what happened, how it happened, and who was responsible.”

“No one was responsible,” Toni said quietly. “It was an accident.”

Mrs. Kramer raised an eyebrow. “Was it? Well, let us hope the police agree with you.”

OUTSIDE MRS. KRAMER’S OFFICE, TONI FINALLY gave way to tears, collapsing into Billy’s arms.

“Tell me it’s a dream. A nightmare. Tell me I’m going to wake up!”

“Shhh.” Billy hugged her. It felt so good to hold her. There was no more “poor Charles” now. He and Toni were in this together. “It’s like you said. It was an accident.”

“But poor Nicholas!” Toni wailed. “I can’t stop thinking how frightened he must have been. How desperate for me to hear him, to save him.”

“Don’t, Toni. Don’t torture yourself.”

“I mean, he must have called out for me, mustn’t he? He must have screamed for help. Oh God, I can’t bear it! What have I done? I should never have left him alone.”

Billy pushed the image of Nicholas Handemeyer’s corpse from his mind. The little boy was floating facedown when Billy found him, in a rocky cove only yards from the shore. Billy had tried the kiss of life and the paramedics had spent twenty straight minutes on the sand doing chest compressions, trying anything to revive him. It was all useless.

Toni said, “They’ll send me to prison for sure, you know.”

“Of course they won’t,” Billy said robustly.

“They will.” Toni wrung her hands. “I already have two counts on my record.”

“You do?”

“One for fraud and one for possession,” Toni explained. “Oh my God, what if they drug-test me? They will, won’t they? I still have all that coke in my system. And grass. Oh, Billy! They’ll lock me up and throw away the key!”

“Calm down. No one’s going to lock you up. I won’t let them.”

Billy was enjoying being the strong one. It felt good having Toni Gilletti lean on him. Need him. This was the way it was supposed to be. The two of them against the world. Charles Braemar Murphy wasn’t man enough for Toni. But he, Billy Hamlin, would step up to the plate.

As he stood stroking Toni’s hair, two Maine police squad cars pulled into the graveled area in front of the Camp Williams lobby. Three men emerged, two in uniform, one in a dark suit and wing-collared shirt. Mrs. Kramer bustled out to greet them, a grim look on her wizened, old woman’s face.

Pulling Toni closer, Billy caught a waft of her scent. A surge of animal longing pulsed through him. He whispered in her ear.

“They’re going to separate us. Compare our stories. Just stick to what you told Mrs. Kramer. It was an accident. And whatever you do, don’t mention drugs.”

Toni nodded miserably. She felt as if she might throw up at any minute. Mrs. Kramer was already leading the police toward them.

“Don’t worry,” said Billy. “You’re going to be just fine. Trust me.”

A COUPLE OF HOURS LATER, ONCE the little boys were safely in their beds, the rest of the Camp Williams counselors sat around a large cafeteria-style table, comforting one another. They’d all seen the ambulance arrive and drive away with little Nicholas Handemeyer’s body. Some of the girls cried.

Mary Lou Parker asked, “What do you think will happen to Toni and Billy?”

Don Choate pushed a cold hot dog around his plate. “Nothing’ll happen. It was an accident.”

For a few moments they were all silent. Then someone said what everyone was thinking.

“Even so. One of them should have seen Nicholas leave the group. Someone should’ve been watching.”

“It was an accident!” Don shouted, slamming his fist down on the table so hard it shook. “It could have happened to any one of us.”

Don had helped carry Nicholas’s body back to camp. He was still only twenty, and obviously traumatized by the whole episode.

“We shouldn’t be throwing accusations around.”

“I’m not throwing accusations. I’m just saying—”

“Well, don’t! Don’t say anything! What the hell do you know, man? You weren’t there.”

Sensing that the boys were about to come to blows, Charles Braemar Murphy put an arm around his friend and led him away. “It’s all right, Don. Come on. Let’s get some air.”

Once they’d gone, Anne Fielding, one of the quieter Wellesley girls, spoke up.

“It’s not all right, though, is it. The boy’s dead. He couldn’t have drowned in such shallow, calm water unless someone took their eye off the ball. For a long, long time.”

“I can see how Billy might have been distracted,” said one of the boys. “That bikini Toni was wearing was kind of an invitation.”

“This is Toni Gilletti we’re talking about,” Mary Lou Parker drawled bitchily. “You don’t need an invitation. It’s first come, first served.”

Everybody laughed.

“Shhh.” Anne Fielding interjected, her face pressed to the window. “They’re coming out.”

The door to the administrative offices opened. Inside, Toni and Billy had both spent the last three hours straight being interviewed by the police. Toni emerged first, leaning on one of the uniformed officers for support. Even from this distance, you could see how smitten the young cop was with her, wrapping his arm protectively around her waist and smiling comfortingly as he escorted her back to her cabin.

“Well, she doesn’t look like she’s in too much trouble,” Mary Lou Parker said caustically.

Moments later, Billy Hamlin came through the same door. Flanked by the plain-clothed detective on one side and the uniformed patrol officer on the other, he had his head down as he was marched toward the squad car. As he climbed into the backseat, the group in the cafeteria caught a glint of silver behind his back.

“They’ve cuffed him!” Anne Fielding gasped. “Oh my goodness. Do you think he’s under arrest?”

“Well, I don’t think they’re taking him to an S-and-M club,” one of the boys said drily.

The truth was, none of the boys at Camp Williams much liked Billy Hamlin. The carpenter’s son was too popular with the ladies for their liking. As for the girls, although they humored him because of his charm and good looks, they too regarded Billy as an outsider, a curiosity to be played with and enjoyed, but hardly an equal. For those with a keen ear for such things, the sound of ranks closing in the Camp Williams dining hall was deafening.

“What do you think you’re doing, gawking at the window like a gaggle of geese?” Martha Kramer’s authoritative voice rang out through the room like an air-raid siren. Everybody jumped.

“If I’m not mistaken, you all have to be at work tomorrow.”

“Yes, Mrs. Kramer.”

“And it’s vital that camp routines continue as normal, for the other children’s sake.”

Only Mary Lou Parker dared to pipe up. “But, Mrs. Kramer, Billy Hamlin—”

“—won’t be helped by idle gossip.” The old woman cut her off. “I hope I don’t need to remind you that a child has died. This isn’t entertainment, Miss Parker. This is tragedy. Now I want you all back in your cabins. Lights out at eleven.”