Free Nantucket Five-Spot by Steven Axelrod Page B

computer and opened the file he had created for relevant data, scrolling again through his pictures of the girl lifted from the hard drive of her mother’s computer. He had hacked into it from the girl’s Facebook page that afternoon. The mother’s e-mails told him everything he needed to know. She was going back home for the first time since the kid was born. The grandmother had died, there was a lot of property, and the will was complicated. The idea was a last family summer on the island, but the girl didn’t want to come. There was nothing to do on Nantucket, she didn’t know anyone and she didn’t want to leave her friends. She couldn’t imagine any possible reason for spending a month “during the most important summer of my whole life” getting sunburned on some beach and traipsing through a stupid museum full of harpoons and whale bones whenever it rained. Which was most of the time, supposedly.
    She couldn’t imagine a reason? That was all right—she didn’t need to.
    Zeke had a reason for her—the best reason in the world.
    It was time for Mommy to learn that no one can keep a secret forever.
    He had already composed the posting to the girl’s Facebook page. The fuse was lit. Now he had to get to Nantucket. He wanted at least two months lead time. There was a lot to do and he wanted to make sure everything was ready when the girl arrived. He closed the computer and sat back with a contented sigh, whispering to himself, rolling the words on his tongue like ripe fruit.
    â€œIt’s on, it’s happening. I’m making it happen.”
    At last.

Chapter Five
    Dinner at Cru
    Eighty minutes before the first bomb went off, smashing our cozy resort-island summer into a season of rage and blood and terror, I was having a swell old time on my first evening out with an old flame.
    I got to the Harbor House early and Franny was waiting for me. She emerged from behind a potted ficus tree while I was checking out the lobby. She was wearing a pale green silk dress that brought out the color of her eyes. The dress left her shoulders bare and fell to just above the knee. Her hair was down and the sight of her caught my breath in my throat for a second. The phrase ‘dressed to kill’ flitted through my mind.
    â€œAre you all right?” she said.
    I swallowed some air. “That dress should come with a warning label. You need to learn the Heimlich maneuver before you wear it.”
    She stepped forward and pressed herself to me. I held her, buried my face in her hair. She smelled the same, the citrus shampoo mingling with some sharp musk of her own. It was overpowering. I eased away from her. People were staring at us. The police chief was making a spectacle of himself with some off-island woman.
    She took my arm as we walked outside, along the bottom of the town on South Beach Street toward the strip. The streets were crowded. The rain had finally cleared off to the south. Kids on bikes and bicycle cops whipped past going both directions. Couples of all ages strolled by. You could also see the requisite “Mr. Man” types, captains of industry, talking into their iPhones. A pack of high school girls swarmed past us. They’d spend the rest of the evening hanging out in front of the fast food restaurants on the Broad Street strip. I generally posted a couple of summer specials there. Tonight it was two kids named Jimmy who’d been loitering on the fringes of the in-crowd themselves a few years ago. I nodded to them as we walked past. They straightened up and tried to look—not busy, since there was really nothing for them to do—alert, anyway.
    â€œSo,” Franny said. “Did you ever finish that book?”
    â€œIt was bad.”
    â€œNot to mention libelous.”
    â€œI could have gotten around the libel part if it was any good.” I pointed ahead of us with a slight chin lift. “I hate these