The Identicals(84)
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
What started out as the Worst Summer of Her Life has gotten better. First Ainsley succeeded in recapturing Teddy’s interest. Since bumping into him at 21 Broad, he has texted her every day, asking when he can see her, when they can hang out. Both Caylee and Harper counsel Ainsley to be slow and measured in her responses. Ainsley does love Teddy, but he hurt her—emotionally for certain but also physically that afternoon in the cubby—and Ainsley isn’t sure that getting back together with Teddy is what she wants. It’s nice to have him in pursuit, however. A lot nicer than pining away for him.
Caylee catches Emma shoplifting two pairs of Hanky Panky low-rise thongs from the store, and she calls the police. Dutch shows up to get Emma off the hook, but his appearance only makes things worse because it turns out that Dutch Marlowe was the one who got Caylee fired from the Straight Wharf. Ainsley’s head spins at this news. On the one hand she thinks, Of course it was dirty, disgusting Dutch Marlowe who grabbed Caylee’s ass. And then somehow Dutch managed to turn the tables so that Caylee was the one who got fired. On the other hand, Ainsley is grateful to Dutch because if Caylee hadn’t gotten fired she wouldn’t be working at the ERF boutique and they wouldn’t now be friends. Caylee has taught Ainsley so much—about grace and kindness and the power of pure intentions. She leads by example. After breaking up with Ramsay, she has chosen not to date anyone else for a while; she wants to spend time with herself, she says. Ainsley loves this idea. She decides that she may get back together with Teddy down the road, but for the rest of the summer and the beginning of her junior year, she is going to spend time with herself. She has gone beyond her summer reading assignments and is devouring all of Edith Wharton, book by book. She has started getting up earlier so she can jog down the Cliff Road bike path—to the water tower and back, two miles round-trip—before work. She has signed up for a class at the Corner Table called Cooking Basics because one of the things she loves about Aunt Harper is her home-cooked meals. Ainsley imagines her mother returning to find her daughter well read, in shape, and accomplished in the kitchen.