The Perfect Couple(106)

After dealing with one liar after another all day long, the Chief is heartened to know he recognizes the truth when he hears it.

He takes a deep breath. “What’s the other thing?”

“The other thing happened when I was clearing,” Chloe says. “It was after the dessert, after the toasts, and I had a tray of champagne flutes I was taking back to the kitchen. I wasn’t watching where I was going and I tripped and fell and the glasses all broke.”

Broken glass, the Chief thinks. “Where did this happen?” he asks.

“At the place where the beach meets the lawn. Over by the left side of the house if you’re standing with your back to the water.”

The Chief writes this down.

“The maid of honor helped me clean up,” Chloe says. “And she was really cool. She asked my name and where I was from, and when I told her I was from Nantucket, she said I was the luckiest girl in the world.” Chloe’s voice gets thick and she wipes at her eyes. “I can’t believe she’s dead. She was a person I talked to last night.”

“Sometimes things happen that way,” the Chief says. “There’s a good chance she took pills, maybe drank too much—”

“She wasn’t drunk,” Chloe says. “Not even a little bit. She seemed like the most sober person at the party.”

“I just want you to realize, Chloe, that every single decision you make—who your friends are, who you date, whether you decide to smoke or drink—has a consequence. I think that Merritt, ultimately, was the victim of her own poor choices.”

Chloe stares at the Chief for a second and he can see she resents his using Merritt’s death as a public service announcement—but this is nothing if not a teachable moment. Chloe reaches for her phone and the Chief knows he’s lost her. Andrea is better at dealing with Chloe; he always ends up sounding like the gruff uncle who also happens to be the chief of police.

“One other question, Chloe,” he says, though he’s sure she wants nothing more than to be rid of him. “Did Merritt cut herself when she was helping you clean up the glass?”

“Cut herself?” Chloe says. She looks up from her phone. “No. Why?”

“Just wondering,” the Chief says. “Are you sure the two of you picked up every bit of glass?”

“It was dark,” Chloe says. “We did the best we could. I was worried, actually, that Greer would find a piece of glass we missed and I would get in trouble for it today. But I guess they had bigger things to worry about.”

The Chief stands up.

“Wait, can I show you one more thing?” Chloe says. She holds her phone up and scoots to the edge of the bed. The Chief takes a seat next to her. “Merritt is an influencer, so I started following her on Instagram last night when I got home. This was her last post.”

The Chief accepts the phone from Chloe and puts on his reading glasses. He has never looked at Instagram before, and he sees it’s nothing more than a photograph with a caption. In this instance, the photo is of two young women posing on the bow of the Hy-Line fast ferry. Their hair is windblown, and Nantucket is visible behind them in the background—the harbor, the sailboats, the gray-shingled fisherman cottages of the wharves, the steeples of the Unitarian and Congregational churches. The blond—Celeste, the bride, the Chief realizes—looks nervous; there’s a hesitation in her smile. The brunette, Merritt, however, is beaming; she is luminous, giving the moment everything she has. She’s a good actress, the Chief thinks. There’s no hint or clue that she was pregnant with the baby of a married man and that he wanted nothing to do with her. The caption of the photo reads: Goin’ to the chapel… wedding weekend with the BEST FRIEND a woman could ask for. #maidofhonor #bridesmaid #happilyeverafter.

“Hashtag happily ever after,” Chloe says. “That’s the part that kills me. Isn’t that the saddest thing you’ve ever seen?”

“Just about,” the Chief says, handing the phone back to Chloe. “Just about.”


The Chief changes into casual clothes and looks longingly at the cold blue cans of Cisco beer in his fridge—but he can’t relax yet. He has arranged to meet Nick back at the station to go over everything one last time.

“Don’t worry about dinner,” he tells Andrea. “I’ll have Keira order us something.”

“I hate murder investigations,” Andrea says, lifting her face for a kiss. “But I love you.”

“And I love you,” he says. He gives his wife a kiss, a second kiss, a third kiss. He thinks about letting Nick wait.


The Chief and Nick meet in an interview room back at the station. Keira, the Chief’s assistant, has ordered a kale Caesar and a couple of artisanal pizzas from Station 21 so they can have a little dinner.

Nick takes a lusty bite of the shrimp and pancetta pizza. “This isn’t bad,” he says. “Normally I stay away from anything called ‘artisanal.’ I like my food real.”

“Chloe said Merritt didn’t cut herself when she helped clean up,” the Chief says. “But she may have cut herself after the kayak ride. The place Chloe said she dropped the tray is right near the path Merritt would have taken to get back to her cottage.”

“That could explain why Merritt went in the water,” Nick says. “I mean, you’d rinse a cut at the water’s edge, but you wouldn’t go all the way in.”