Stranger on the Shore Read online

  Ring had probably done without a few meals. Maybe Michaela. She had a perpetually hungry look.

  At last dinner was over and the Arlingtons adjourned to the drawing room for more bridge. Even Ring seemed okay with the idea of bridge, so maybe it was a match made in heaven.

  Griff stopped Jarrett in the doorway. “Can I speak to you?”

  Jarrett raised his brows. “Of course, my boy.”

  As they stepped into the hall, Griff said, “I wanted to ask if it would be all right for me to take Gemma’s journal down to the cottage this evening.”

  Jarrett looked relieved. What had he expected to hear? “Of course. Of course.”

  “Otherwise I don’t think I’ll be able to read the whole thing in the amount of time I have.”

  Jarrett repeated, “My boy, it’s a reasonable request. Come with me.”

  Griff accompanied him down the long hall to the library. The walls were lined with gold-framed portraits, family portraits going by the physical resemblance of the subjects to each other.

  Jarrett pointed at a portrait of a fair young woman in a blue gown and a sixties bouffant. “My late wife. She died when Mike was two. I think we would have been a very different family if Nicole had lived.”

  “I’m sorry,” Griff said, having no idea how to respond to that.

  “It’s disconcerting to see us through your eyes.” Jarrett smiled faintly. “I hope you’re not a poker player, my boy.”

  And now Griff really had no idea what to say. He offered, “More like Crazy Eights,” and Jarrett laughed and patted him on the back.

  They walked into the library and Griff was relieved to see the lavender journal still sitting on the long table surrounded by photo albums. He had half expected that it would be gone. But no. There it was. Right where Muriel had left it the day before.

  Jarrett picked up the fat volume and handed it to him. His smile seemed twisted.

  “I promise to be careful with it.”

  “I know you will be.”

  Griff’s gaze fell on the birdcage clock. He remembered that he had been dreaming of the automaton bird the night before. The red-and-blue bird seemed to watch him with a beady and skeptical eye. “That’s some clock.”

  Jarrett followed his gaze and smiled fondly at the motionless bird. “Ah. Yes it is. That’s a 1920 German clock made by Karl Griesbaum. I remember being fascinated by it when I was a boy. Sadly, Chloe knocked it off the table when she was still learning to walk. Now it only sings at five o’clock. The cocktail hour. I’m not sure if that’s significant or not.”

  Griff laughed, put the journal in his pocket, and bade Jarrett good-night.

  * * *

  I feel awful for saying it, but I wish Muriel had not come back.

  Griff sat up, punched the stack of pillows into shape against the headboard, and flopped down again, opening Gemma’s journal to his saved place. He had been reading for about three hours and he was now well into 1993, only a couple of weeks from Brian’s kidnapping.

  He had been through Michaela’s out-of-wedlock pregnancy, Marcus’s ongoing bitterness over losing Gemma to his older brother, and Muriel’s year-long absence to “find herself.”

  Of everything he had read so far, the idea of staid, stuffy Muriel taking off for adventures in parts unknown was the most fascinating. True, twenty years ago Muriel had been a much younger woman, and presumably she had not been quite so entrenched in her garden club and charity work. Even so.

  She’s the worst possible influence on Mike. The more she nags, the more Mike is determined to do the absolute opposite. I really thought we were making progress, but it’s all unraveling.

  Gemma’s journals were a dream come true for a biographer or historian. She was not only frank, she often explained context, almost as though she had anticipated her journal being used one day as a guidebook for a stranger working his way through the intricacies of the Arlington family’s relationships.

  And not just the Arlingtons’ family relationships.

  Poor Pierce. Brian loves him so. Pierce puts up with it with mostly good grace when Brian follows him around like a puppy. Brian is so cute when Pierce deigns to notice him. So is Pierce for that matter. He’s such a serious boy and he’s so embarrassed and self-conscious beneath that barrage of adoration. Brian is always trying to climb into his lap or hug him or drag him off to play. Pierce turns so red even his ears get pink.

  Brian seems so grown up compared to Chloe, but when I see him next to Pierce I realize how little he really is. I hope they all grow up to be wonderful friends...

  * * *

  Griff woke much later to find the pink-and-blue globe lamp still shining brightly in the otherwise dusky room. The phone was ringing.

  The sound was jarring and unfamiliar. Not his cell, he realized groggily. The jangle came from downstairs. It had to be the old wall phone that connected the guest cottage to the main house.

  The brass bells on the phone continued to shrill through the dark cottage.

  He put Gemma’s journal aside, shoved back the blankets, and stumbled downstairs. He didn’t know where the lights were and he stubbed his toe on one of the footstools, and then banged his ankle against a table leg before he got to the phone.

  Griff fumbled the hand piece off its rest. “Hello?”

  At first he thought it was a child crying on the other end. His scalp prickled in horror. Then he realized it was an adult voice mimicking a child’s. That was worse.

  The crying stopped and a sing-song voice came on the line. “You better go home, Mr. Hadley,” the puppet voice said. “You better go home while you still can!”

  Chapter Twelve

  Through the bulletproof windows Griff could see great, gleaming spools of razor wire and fencing. Beyond the tall fence was “the yard” flanked by cell blocks and guard towers.

  Johnson was still speaking. He had a soft, pleasant voice, which was surprisingly soothing. Griff had asked him, “What do you think happened to Brian?” and Johnson had been talking ever since. Talking but not saying much.

  “They never found a body, right? The kid’s still alive.”

  “They never found Jimmy Hoffa either,” Griff said. “But I don’t think anyone believes he’s alive.”

  “Shit no, Hoffa’s dead. But nobody had any reason to kill Brian. He’s out there somewhere.”

  If only that was true. If only it was that simple. No one had any reason to kill the Lindbergh baby either. No one had any reason—good reason—to kill any child, but children died all the time. Sometimes by accident, which was what Griff thought it must have been in this case, because Johnson was a gentle giant of a man. His curly hair was gray now. His eyes were soft and dark as molasses.

  Then Griff remembered that the first time Johnson had been incarcerated was for attempted armed robbery.

  “They’d have found him if he was dead,” Johnson repeated. “You never saw so many police as they had looking for that little kid.”

  Because of its grim history, Sing Sing had been renamed Ossining Correctional Facility in 1970, but the name hadn’t stuck. You couldn’t fight a past like that one, and the prison was now known as Sing Sing Correctional Facility. By any name it was a maximum security prison incarcerating roughly two thousand very bad people.

  Griff had never been inside a prison before. Jails, yes, but prison—let alone a legendary maximum security prison, was a different thing. Not that Johnson seemed unduly dangerous or the guards unduly intimidating. It wasn’t like Griff feared a prison break was imminent. No, it was that this interview with Odell Johnson was supposed to provide the core of his book. He had one shot at getting this right, and Johnson was not helping.

  It had not been easy to get permission to interview Johnson. True, it wasn’t as tough as it would have been in 1892
when prisoners were allowed two annual visits from family only. Johnson was willing to be interviewed, but previous attempts by other media personnel had been blocked by the Arlington family who objected to the “exploitation or commercialization” of their tragedy; proof that the Arlingtons were still very influential people. The fact that the Arlingtons—Jarrett Arlington at least—had given the venture his blessing was the only reason Griff had finally been granted access.

  Outside the window he watched a small bird start to land on the coil of barbed wire, have second thoughts, and fly away again.

  “Is it true you had a relationship with Michaela Arlington?” Griff asked, cutting off Johnson’s theory that Brian was waiting for the right moment to let the world know he was still alive.

  Johnson stopped talking. He looked startled and then he laughed. “Man, that chick was crazy.”

  “How crazy?” asked Griff.

  “Wild. Always trying to prove how bad she was.” Johnson shook his head. “That’s all it was for her. Trying to show her daddy how bad she was.”

  “How bad was she?”

  Johnson chuckled. “Not as bad as she wished she was.”

  “You said it wasn’t serious for her. Was it serious for you?”

  “Naw. I was just having some fun.”

  No, it wasn’t going well. In his fantasies, Griff had imagined Johnson being coaxed into breaking his silence and spilling the whole sad story. Clearly that wasn’t going to happen.

  “Did you like working for the Arlingtons?”

  “That was the happiest I ever been,” Johnson said solemnly. “See, I wouldn’t have done anything to wreck that.”

  “When did you get the idea to write the ransom letter?”

  “That morning,” Johnson said. “It was on the radio about how they couldn’t find the boy, but there hadn’t been any demand for ransom, so they were sure it was an accident.” Johnson gave another of those warm chuckles, and this time Griff’s scalp crawled. “So I wrote a letter and I pretended to be the kidnapper.”

  “You didn’t think that was kind of a cruel thing to do?”

  “No. I wasn’t a kidnapper,” Johnson pointed out, as though this was the point.

  But then again maybe it was the point.

  “I was in too big a hurry and I blew it,” Johnson said. “I should have hidden that money somewhere else. But I was afraid if there was a real kidnapper, he’d get in there first. So I rushed it. You have to have a plan. I didn’t have one.”

  “Yeah, that was too bad,” Griff said absently. He was running out of questions.

  His gaze circled the shabby visitors’ room. Were the walls faded green or dirty beige? If it was hard to imagine living like the Arlingtons, it was even harder to imagine living like this. Not a moment of privacy or independence. Nothing of beauty. Nothing to inspire. The ceiling was low, hung with fluorescent strips. The faded, slightly curling posters on the wall warned against a variety of evils—too little too late.

  “I think it was the other one,” Johnson said. “Miss Muriel. I used to drive her and Mr. Arlington. Everybody else had their own cars and drove themselves. Not Miss Muriel. She didn’t drive.”

  Griff stared at him. “You think what was Miss Muriel? You think she was behind Brian’s disappearance?”

  Johnson seemed surprised and then he considered it, blinking his long-lashed brown eyes like a contemplative bull. “Naw. I mean, I think she’s the one who told Mr. Arlington about me and Mike. That’s why they got rid of me. That other was bullshit.”

  “What do you mean? You did have a criminal record.”

  “They knew about that.”

  “They—what? What do you mean? You mean you told Tuppalo about your record when you were interviewed?”

  “That would have been stupid. But they had to know. People like that check your references, check your driving record. I worked for them for over a year. They had to know. It didn’t matter to them because I was good at my job.” He said darkly, “But then—” He stopped.

  “So you think Muriel told her father about your relationship with Michaela, and they fired you and pretended it was because of your record?”

  “Yep. That Miss Muriel? She was a piece of work. Always butting her nose into other people’s business. One of those do-gooders who doesn’t do anybody any good.”

  Griff had no idea if that was true or not. He wasn’t all that taken with Muriel, and after reading Gemma’s journal he was less taken still. “If someone did take Brian, who do you think it was?”

  Johnson said, sounding slightly offended, “How would I know?”

  “What did you think would happen when you made that demand for ransom?” Griff asked curiously. “It must have occurred to you that you’d probably get caught.”

  “No. If I hadn’t been a damn fool and rushed it, I’d have gotten clean away. And even if they did get me for extortion, they couldn’t prove the rest. There wasn’t even a body. It’s not murder if there’s no body. But old man Arlington’s money and powerful friends got me railroaded right into a prison cell.”

  That was a common misconception among criminals: no body equaled no homicide. But corpus delicti referred to the body of evidence required to establish a crime rather than an actual human body. A wealth of circumstantial evidence had been used to convict Johnson of Brian’s murder.

  Griff asked a few more questions and Johnson replied and even elaborated, but the truth was, this interview, the intended cornerstone of Griff’s book, wasn’t eliciting a lot more information than he already possessed.

  He came at last to his final question. “It’s been twenty years. What do you want people to know?”

  It seemed Johnson had been waiting for this. He folded his big, rough hands not quite in prayer, but not so far from it, and said earnestly, “People have to know. I didn’t take Brian. I didn’t hurt that little boy. I’ve been locked up here for twenty years for a crime I didn’t do. Anything I did do wrong, I’ve paid for a dozen times over. I don’t deserve to spend the rest of my life here.”

  * * *

  Traffic was heavy on Griff’s drive back to Long Island, and it took about two hours to reach Muttontown. By then it was about four-thirty, and Griff decided to stop and grab something to eat before returning to Winden House. The idea of another of those painful dinners with the Arlingtons was just more than he could take after a long and not particularly fruitful day.

  Muttontown was a residential village located in the Town of Oyster Bay. One of the most affluent places to live in the country, the average Muttontowner’s income was over three hundred grand, the average Muttontowner’s net worth was just about a million and a half. The village had incorporated in 1931, not so long after F. Scott Fitzgerald had been knocking around the area, cooking up East Egg and West Egg.

  One of these mansions housed the elder Mathers, Thomas and Elizabeth, and their daughter. Pierce too probably lived somewhere around here in one of these splendid houses. A lot of those in the Arlingtons’ social circle lived in these chateaus and colonials surrounded by rolling meadows and lush gardens. Lived with their chefs and nannies and chauffeurs and swimming pools and limos and stables. Wealthy people by any reckoning, but not on the same scale as the Arlingtons.

  Not far away was the Muttontown Preserve, five hundred plus miles of walking trails through woodlands and meadows and the overgrown grounds of ruined Gold Coast estates including Knollwood, which had once belonged to the last king of Albania.

  After Brian’s disappearance, the Muttontown Preserve had been searched several times, and a number of people still believed Brian’s body was hidden somewhere in that wilderness.

  Griff drove on to Syosset and stopped at a steakhouse called The Carriage House.

  The building was indeed a Civil War-era carriage house trendily renovated in pale
woods and white leather. Gigantic abstract paintings of white flowers decorated the fashionably unfinished walls. Tall white orchids in shallow stone dishes sat on the tables. Tiny white light bulbs were strung across the open air space.

  It was happy hour and the bar was crowded with young and not so young professional types. It sounded like they had been there awhile.

  Griff was seated at a small table in the back of the room, handed a menu which he promptly scanned for French dip. There was no French dip, but the Prime Rib Melt featuring toasted Havarti, parmesan truffle fries, and au jus sounded reasonably close and happened to be the evening special.

  He ordered the prime rib and a beer called Blind Bat, and sat back to enjoy the spectacle of pretty people enjoying themselves. His own home, his own friends, seemed very far away. As though all that was behind him now. It was a lonely feeling.

  The waitress brought his beer. Blind Bat’s Long Island Oyster Stout turned out to be a very nice Irish dry stout. Griff sipped thoughtfully. The tune from dinner the night before had been running through his mind all day. “Stranger on the Shore.” He thought maybe it would make a good title for the book.

  But he didn’t want to think about the book right now. The interview with Johnson had been a disappointment and he was going to have to regroup. Later. For now he would concentrate on enjoying his meal—he didn’t often splurge on a sit-down dinner at a nice restaurant—and not let himself borrow trouble. It wasn’t as if he didn’t have plenty of worry already banked.

  There was a burst of laughter from the bar, a couple of bodies shifted and Griff caught a glimpse of Pierce in the center of the group of suits and skirts. He was laughing at something a very pretty brunette was saying. He looked relaxed, younger and very handsome.

  Griff looked away, surprised at his own sudden flush of excitement. What the heck was that about? He didn’t like Pierce and Pierce obviously didn’t like him. Pierce was not remotely his type.