The Sum of Her Parts

A flash of light peeled my eyelids back. A fiery eruption expelled the night. A white sheet framed a black shape. The clubhouse prowled like a great monster on scrawny legs knee-deep in the water before me.

Was I hallucinating? The Fourth of July party over at the Duck Point Yacht Club had ended long ago. Since the celebration had finished with fireworks, perhaps a smoldering fuse had sparked an encore. Yet the final boom never came. Since the weather had been playing tricks of late, perhaps dawn was coming early. Yet the sun could never approach from the west.

An orange halo crowned its charcoal roof, golden beams parted its ebony pilings, and a silvery gleam blanched the inky water below. The silent shadows swooping across the incandescent screen were fleeing bats.

Often, sleep sailed in with dreams in tow when I was resting on my porch. But now, once my knuckles had rubbed illusion into truth, the yacht club stood silhouetted by light, motionless as usual, solid on its pilings, way out in the harbor. This was not a dream.

A burning boat burst out from behind the clubhouse. Its cargo was shimmering white heat. Nimble yellow flames danced on its gunwales as tongues of red fire lapped skyward. Running free on the wind and waves in a chaos of conflagration, the vessel hurtled down the river. When a shroud of darkness doused her exotic running lights, she disappeared from sight.

The sight of the boat snuffed worries about my imagination, but left me wondering about the facts. Why was the boat on fire? Where had it come from? Where was it going? Was anyone aboard? I finished the night, sleepless, staring into bottomless black.

When the sun showed up for work, I too was eager to get going. Out on the water across from my porch, the yacht club resisted this wake-up call, its window glass eyes glaring back as sunbeams lifted mist off its roof and stripped murk off its walls. One bit of tarnish defied the luster of dawn. The yardarm slung on the flagpole was bare; the red, white, and blue salute to sunup was missing. I should have known what that meant.

“Off your butt, Sawbones.”

A hedge paralleled the club’s walkway where it met the shore beside my house. Tall and dense, the shrubbery hid my porch. Passersby and porch-sitters could not see each other through it, but if some people on one side of the hedge were talking, anybody on the other side could hear the conversation.

“We’ve got work to do.”

The commands slicing through the hedge showed how hard it was to muffle George Grandfou. Even though he was not an Irish cop from Boston, he was your typical gregarious flatfoot, informal and outspoken with everyone. Which explains why he had climbed up my stairs to introduce himself as my neighbor the first day he moved into the village. Over time, what Grandfou was hoping for grew into a given, and a now and then beer or two evolved into getting together several times a week. In fact, because he was on my porch so much, the villagers mistook us for the best of friends.

“Be right with you, Detective. I just have to leave a note for Judith.”

Connecting with Grandfou or anyone for happy hour was out of the ordinary for me because during years of clinical practice I socialized little and never drank—at least whenever I was working or on call. Since we were so different, it was hard to figure why such a relationship developed at all. Yet pairings like Fat and Skinny or Abbott and Costello prove opposites do attract.

“If you hustle your butt, you’ll get to see what’s goin’ on.”

The best explanation for our connecting was that I had turned my back on surgery at New England Coastal Hospital about the same time Grandfou had hit the skids with the City of Beauport Police. I was not making diagnoses, and he was not solving crimes, so we were both suffering from professional loneliness. Although I had locked myself out of medical cases, Grandfou still had access to criminal ones. We began analyzing some of his cases together, and it turned into a rewarding pastime. The physician picked appetizers off the policeman’s platter. The price paid was free beer.

“Come on, Doc. We’ve got a great one to work on right under our noses.”

Years of night call had trained me to leap from sleepiness to sharpness, so it took little time to answer this summons. Besides, I was still dressed from last night’s party, and even if a little festive, the coat and tie would make my involvement look official.

After skirting the hedge at the front corner of my house and heading down the walkway, I caught up to my fellow investigator and downshifted into the swagger that had always got me by hospital security without any questions. Grandfou omitted even a nod of recognition, for it was morning hangover time.

“Thanks for including me, George. I was wondering what was up.”

In thinking about the fire out on the water, if what I was getting into was uncertain, where I was going was clear. Like Mutt over Jeff, I could look right over my associate’s head and see the target ahead. A cormorant lingered beside the moon on the clubhouse peak.

The Duck Point Yacht Club ruled the waterfront at the tip of the peninsula formed by the Eel River and Snug Harbor. For over one hundred and fifty years, whether by land or sea, the “Club” had welcomed invitees and confronted intruders. Like a gigantic bird feathered in shingles, the clubhouse nested on piles sunk into the ocean’s bottom. Depending on how one looked at it, the supports either exposed or protected the building. Depending on how the tide and wind combined, it was either getting water-soaked or blow-dried.

“What’s going on at the Club? Is it too early for you to bring me up to date?”

Grandfou stopped lurching forward, leaned over the rail, and hung his head. Hands spread and feet planted, he spit into the water below. He was trying to hide his need to rest. At least, he did not vomit.

The wooden walkway was the only way for a pedestrian to enter or exit the yacht club. This centipede of linked planks on log legs stepped away from the clubhouse, plodded through water, crawled over rocks, scurried across marsh, and climbed up onto the shore. The spread of seawater underneath this pathway expanded or contracted according to the state of the tide. At high tide, it swelled into a bay of one hundred yards between the piles under the clubhouse and the rocks on the shore. At low tide, it shrank into a moat of twenty yards between low walls of granite and marsh grass.

“The chief’s on his way over.”

“That can’t make you very happy, but it tells me this is a big deal.”

“What’s a big deal for some is a pain in the butt for others.”

The scowl was standard early morning Grandfou. Pasty fat squeezed his bloodshot eyes, and a dry tongue parted parched lips. “With any luck, at least you’ll get the flavor of what went on before the bum kicks you out.”

“I’ve been hungry for some explanation ever since the fire woke me up last night.”

“You already know about that monkey business? I figured you were dead to the world.” That I was in the know crushed Grandfou. In the course of our hobby, my knack as an analyst had relegated him to supplying facts, which he recognized as the demotion it was. When I came up with twists or angles he had not considered, he did not just mind it—he hated it.

“It was a goddamn empty boat, Doc. Burned to the waterline. Driftin’ down the river in the middle of the night. Doesn’t make any damn sense at all.”

“If you’re right about those facts—I’d have to see for myself to be sure—there’d be reasons for all three.”