Nantucket Plunder, A Henry Kennis short story

 

Mike Henderson was in trouble again.

His brushes with the law had never amounted to much – in fact they had become a small private joke between us. The time he managed to give himself the best possible motive and no alibi for the most notorious murder in the island’s history, or the time he was seen walking away from a murder scene with what looked like blood all over his hands. He was cleared both times – coincidence and paint.

            But this was different. This was serious.

            Five customers had filed theft reports on houses where Mike had been working over the winter. They’d arrived for the summer season, opened their houses and found things missing. The five lists together made an impressive inventory: Tiffany silver, Reyes lightship baskets, a stash of Kruggerands. And there was a startling amount of original art gone missing: Rauschenberg collages, Jim Dine hearts, Hockney swimming pools, along with several pieces of Stickley furniture and collections of Staffordshire dogs and Rookwood pottery.

            “This is no smash and grab break in artist,” Haden Krakauer said after I finished going through the missing property lists. My assistant chief was shrewd and cynical and he knew the island much better than me. He grew up on Nantucket and knew everyone and their families and their family scandals going back three generations. “This is a connoisseur. These robberies were curated.”

            “So ignore the usual suspects?”

            “Well …”

            Neither of us wanted to be accused of profiling but the fact remained that most of the house robberies on the island were committed either by drunk high school kids who had the alarm codes or by desperate immigrants trying to keep up with the rent, the food prices or a shiny new all-American opioid addiction. It could be a landscaper from Jamaica, a mason’s apprentice from Ecuador, a bus boy from Belarus – single or married, with kids or without. But those thefts all had a common accent, a familiar grammar -- like English spoken badly. Those thieves stole bling and electronics – Apple Watches and X-box systems, flat screens and costume jewelry. Lots of fake diamond rings and pearl necklaces along with the occasional valuable item, because they didn’t know the difference.

            This guy knew the difference. This was an educated, discerning thief who had access to the most well-guarded and expensively alarmed houses on the island. Which narrowed things down drastically – that was what Haden meant.

            “I need the next list,” I told him. “The list with the names of everyone who worked on those houses over the winter. Put Kyle Donnelly on it.”

            It took Kyle a few days, leveraging a lifetime of island contacts to pry information out of the close-knit community of builders and contractors. My friend Pat Folger had put up a guest cottage for one of the burglary victims; Billy Delavane had built the custom staircase. Kyle got a list of all Folger’s subs -- from electricians and plumbers to plasterers and painters.  The other houses had no large-scale projects going on through the winter months, but Kyle contacted the owners, and through them he found the caretakers, and the caretakers gave him lists. Some owed him favors (a warning instead of a DUI), some had been pals with his grandfather. Some accepted the standard bribe: a Bud Lite 18 pack.

            When the roll call was complete, Kyle surprised me by taking the next step. I’d been teaching him for five years; he was finally starting to learn something. Baby steps – simple procedure. But I made sure to give him what my old boss in L.A. used to all an “attaboy” when he laid the five long lists -- and the one short list -- my desk the next Monday morning.

            He had done the cross referencing. Only three people had worked in all the burglarized houses in the off-season. Arturo Maturo, the plumber, Tom Danziger, the electrician – and Mike Henderson, the painter. They had all worked on the Lomax house a few years back and had all been suspects, briefly. They all had other secrets they were reluctant to share and by the end of the investigation I felt more like a parish priest than a police officer. I gave them the only absolution I could – I let them go with a thank you and an apology.

            But now they were all on the blotter again.

            I cleared the first two quickly. Maturo had been draining the pipes after one of the families came up for Christmas and kids had come up in March to grab some summer clothes. Their selfies showed most of the loot in the background. That let Maturo off the hook.

Danziger had done extensive re-wiring in two of the houses, and the inspector remembered various stolen objects still in place when came over to sign off on the work.

None of that cleared them of every house on the list, but we were assuming one thief and one modus operandi for all the crimes. Beyond that, Danziger and Maturo were unlikely suspects. Plumbers and Electricians ruled as blue collar royalty on Nantucket. They had no need for petty theft to augment their incomes and no reason to jeopardize their standing in the hierarchy of the building trades by stealing from their customers.  At around two hundred bucks an hour, most people thought they were stealing anyway.

That left Mike Henderson.

As usual, he had no alibi. All the circumstantial evidence was against him. He had worked in all the houses, mostly alone. He had often remarked that painting was a socially sanctioned form of trespassing, and more than one client had fired him, accusing him of that very crime. He was always broke, scrounging a living from job to job, so he was motivated to pick up a few extra dollars by theft. He charged according to the model of car he found in the garage and felt no compunction about gouging the wealthy. So why not help himself to the odd silver tea pot or lightship basket?

But was angry and baffled when I brought him in for questioning. It’s hard to fake that level of outrage.

“Check my bank account! See if you can find all this money I’m supposed to be stealing. I hope you do find it! I could use it. We’re a month behind on our mortgage payments right now.”

I pushed against the edge of my desk, rolled my chair back a few inches. We were talking in my office, much to Haden Krakauer’s dismay. He liked doing things by the book. As far as my Assistant Chief was concerned, Mike was a suspect in a string of B&E felonies, and ought to be treated that way. I wasn’t so sure. I hadn’t arrested Mike, and I didn’t want to Mirandize him. I wanted to talk, but I wasn’t going to shove him into an interrogation room like a common criminal.

At least not yet. “Your bank account is the last place I’d expect you to stash stolen money, Mike. You told me yourself – small-time house-painters are the last stalwarts of the cash economy.”

“Thanks a lot.”

“You don’t work for big contractors. You don’t carry Workmen’s Comp. Not since the Lomax job. You don’t have big crew anymore, either -- or a big payroll to meet. When you need a 40-foot ladder, or someone you trust to roll a ceiling, you ask your friends. Right?”

“Right.”

“It’s a collective. You all fly under the radar and you all prefer cash payments, rolls of hundreds –“

“Nantucket Sawbucks.”

“Exactly.”

“Some people call them Nantucket tens, but that sounds like a political movement.”

“Maybe you are a political movement. Guerilla painting – steal from the rich and give to the poor. Which would be you, I assume. Unless you’re also donating to the Food Bank.”

“I can’t afford to donate to anyone! It’s like my dad used to say – I have to take out a loan to pay attention.”

“And yet your wife is driving a brand new Jeep Grand Cherokee.”

“That was a gift. From her father.”

“And you can prove that.”

“Do I have to?”

“You might.”

“So you can just … audit my whole life over some random accusation?”

I shrugged. “It’s one way to prove you’re innocent.”

“When we asked Cindy’s dad to help us pay for Montessori school, it was just like this. ‘Should you really be going out to dinner in your financial situation?’ ‘That sounds like quite the expensive vacation for a fellow in your straightened circumstances.’”

“So what did you do?”

“I told him to take his money and go fuck himself, and I put the kids in public school.”

“Good for you.”

“That wouldn’t really work in this case.”

“No, but I’ll tell you something, Mike. I’m going to stick the foundational assumption of American jurisprudence -- that you’re innocent until proved guilty. Still, someone’s been stealing stuff out of the houses you work on.”

“So … what are you going to do?”

I gave him my best encouraging smile. “Catch them.”

 

Unfortunately, I had another criminal matter to deal with that day, one much closer to home. It had begun the week before, with Jane Stiles’ yard sale. Rain had forced the event inside and we spent the morning hastily arranging antique furniture, glassware, rugs and runners and a rack of vintage women’s dresses in the cramped confines of her cottage.

Otherwise the sale was normal: advertised for ten o’clock, with the first early birds showing up at eight, helping themselves to a Downeyflake donut from the traditional box of a dozen Jane always set out for the shoppers.

The usual crowd appeared by the formal start of the sale – long-time customers (Jane’s family ran a legendary consignment store back in the day), old friends and the small tribe of local hoarders and collectors, along with the occasional tourist.

The scroungers were a diverse group – from High School history teacher Roy Danvers to Sam Trikilis, my garbage man; from landscapers and masons to Sheriff Bob Bulmer and a dot com millionaire who had just bought the giant house next door. The music from his parties on those early summer nights made Jane feel like Nick Carraway in The Great Gatsby.

The kids all pitched in, Caroline talking up the merchandise and horse-trading the prices, Tim manning the cash box. Jane’s son Sam helped carry the smaller items to the cars. The sale went well and the rain let up in the early afternoon, with a fresh south wind tearing the clouds apart, revealing ragged patches of blue sky. In accordance with another long-standing Stiles family tradition, we skimmed some of the cash proceeds and treated ourselves to dinner for five at the Sconset café.

That was Sunday night. Tuesday morning Jane noticed that her fore-edge books were missing. She hadn’t included them in the sale and never would. They had belonged to her grandfather and she had inherited them after a scuffle with her sister, who had taken the five volumes from the old man’s house the day he died, along with a Matisse screen and various other valuables. Fortunately the will specified that Jane got the books, and she managed to recover them. Her sister already had them packaged up and ready to auction off on e-Bay.

I had never seen a fore-edge book before and neither had my kids. They’re the perfect artifact for a detective, because the art they feature – in the case of Jane’s books, paintings of various Nantucket landmarks – is hidden. The images only appear on the outside edge of the pages when you fan the book open. With the book closed, there’s no way to know the pictures exist.

It’s a book! It’s a toy! Tim seemed particularly fascinated with the trick, as well as the subject matter, Many of the featured destinations no longer existed – the black Washing Pond water tower, the old Straight Wharf theater. He even said he’d love to buy one if he only had the money and Jane was willing to part with it. I think she found his enthusiasm touching.

But then, on Tuesday, she saw him riding away from her cottage on his bike with his school backpack bulging.

And the books were gone.

It may seem like an open-and-shut case from this brief description: Tim had motive and opportunity. But Jane was mostly living with me that summer, and only used the cottage for a writing studio. Most of the time the place was deserted and she’d never even owned a key to the front door. Anyone who’d been snooping around at the sale could have come back for what my old boss in L.A., Chuck Obremski, used to call a “five-finger discount”. Everyone there had a motive, and anyone who took the time to study Jane’s routines had an opportunity.

But Tim was the only one Jane saw at the scene of the crime.

“I hate to even bring this up,” she said that night after dinner. We had strolled into town and were walking along Easy Street. She sat down on one of the benches facing the harbor.

“Tell me,” I said.

So she did.

We sat in silence for a while.

“You know he didn’t do it,” I said finally.

“I hope he didn’t. But he was out there by himself the day after the sale. What was he doing there?”

“I don’t know.”

“You’re going to have to ask him.”

“Yeah.” Then after a few moments: “How would it work in one of your books?”

She relaxed a little, reached out a hand to let a passing Labradoodle take a sniff. She had time for one quick ruffle behind the ears before the owner, a slim blond in a yoga outfit, yanked him away. Jane squinted in thought. “You’d need parts of all five books to crack a code. Or maybe they’d be clues to some kind of crazy scavenger hunt.”

“How about someone just taking them and selling them to collectors?”

“Naaa. Too boring.”

“But this is the real world, and they’re worth a lot of money.”

“I guess.”

“Tim doesn’t need money. He’s a kid. He gets an allowance.”

“Unless he’s on drugs. Or something.”

“But he’s not. I know the signs. And so do you.”

She nodded. We sat for a while more. An artist started setting up to paint the view. “You still need to talk to him,” she said.

I shrugged. “Interrogations are my specialty.”

“Innocent until proven guilty,” Mike Henderson said, the next day, riding shotgun i9n my cruiser. “Not too many people really believe that. In America it’s more like you’re guilty even after you’re proved innocent – like O.J. Simpson, or that car guy. DeLorean. He was acquitted, too. But everybody knows he sold coke to finance his car company.”

“You’re a cynical man, Mike,” I said.

“Which makes me normal. And you’re not cynical at all – which makes you kind of a freak, to be honest.  But in a good way.”

“Especially right now.”

I was investigating the burglarized job sites, talking to the families. I had Mike with me because I wanted his painter’s eye on the crime scenes, and I was curious to see how he’d react to the victims. More importantly, I wanted them to see Mike  on good terms wioth the Chief, and cooperating with law enforcement.

Nothing we had found out so far made his case look any better. Two houses had surveillance cameras working year-round, and both had been crudely disabled. One had a piece of the burlap landscapers used to wrap shrubs against the cold blocking it. Hungry deer chewed through the burlap sometimes, and the wind could have blown a scrap against the lens. But this piece of fabric was cut cleanly, with a knife – like the Swiss Army knife that Mike always carried. The other house was even more damning. What looked like bird droppings obscuring the camera lens turned out to be paint – the very paint Mike had been using on the job.

The victims didn’t share my quaint beliefs about innocence and guilt any more than Mike did. They weren’t pleased to see him, but they had to pretend to welcome me. At least I got detailed inventories of the missing items. “My belongings,” one of the women moaned to me.

“A Stickley table, two Tiffany lamps, a first edition of the 1930 Random House Moby Dick with the Rockwell Kent illustrations. You have quite an eye, buddy,” he said to Mike.

“Someone does.”

I sighed. “It’s hard to hate a criminal who loves Rockwell Kent.”

“He doesn’t love Rockwell Kent! He knows he can get a couple of grand for the book. He’s probably sold it already.”

Cynic.

We caught a break on the last house Mike had painted. A hulking pile on Medouwe Creek road in Polpis, Mike still had the keys and the alarm codes. The family wasn’t going to arrive for another week. As usual they had threatened to be on island by Memorial Day to crack the whip on the tradesmen, but weren’t actually due until the Fourth of July. “They think we work because we’re afraid of them,” Mike said. “Actually we work because we want to get paid. False panic is not required.”

It was a perfect late June day, the island lush and green after a rainy spring, the sky a flawless blue. Even the humidity had broken. We approached the silent house over the perfectly manicured lawn and Mike said, “This is what they pay the million dollars for. A day like this. But look --” he pointed to the small squat city of air conditioning condensers buzzing at the side of the house. “The most delicious sea breeze in America and they never even open their windows. That’s the new money around here in a nutshell.”

“An impeccably climate controlled nutshell,” I added.

“Exactly. Well, here we are.”

He let us in, and poked the alarm code into the pad by the front door.

“Did you notice anything missing?” I asked as we walked in the hotel lobby chill of the foyer.

He shrugged. “I really don’t pay that much attention.”

“Not a great slogan for a house painter.”

“Come on, Chief! I notice a bad cut in, okay? I’m the king of latex touch up. But I’m not casing the joint when I’m supposed to be stripping the trim.”

I looked around the massive “great room” with its thirty foot ceiling and wall of fifteen light French doors. “So you’re finished here.”

“Yeah. We packed up yesterday.”

“But the cleaning people haven’t started.”

“I think they come in tomorrow.”

“Well, that’s a plus.”

I found the stain ten minutes later. I saw it as an irregularity in the pattern of a woven cotton area rug, sticking out from the hem of the cloth draping an end table. I was on my knees sniffing it when Mike walked up behind me.

“Did you spill coffee here?” I said, moving the table aside. The lamp teetered and Mike reached out to steady it.

“No.”

“You’re sure?”

“No coffee on the job. That’s one of my rules. People leave the cups around, or knock them over. It looks bad – unprofessional. Most of my customers don’t even let their kids eat anywhere but the kitchen. They’re neat freaks. You have to respect that.”

I nodded. “Well someone spilled hazelnut coffee here. Take a sniff.”

He got down, put his nose to the rug. Standing, he said, “Yeah. And it’s fresh. Maybe a couple of days old, tops.”

I pointed down to the wedge of carpet between the couch and the end table.

“Crumbs,” he said.

I smiled. “A trail of bread crumbs. Just a like a fairy tale.”

He bent down, picked one up on a moistened finger tip, touched it to his tongue. “But this was a cookie.”

We moved the table aside and found a small triangular wedge hidden under the skirt of the couch. I pulled on a latex glove, took an evidence bag and a pair of tweezers from my pocket and dropped the cookie chunk inside. “Now we figure out where this came from and who ordered it with a hazelnut coffee.”

Mike shook his head in amused disgust. “And learn what kind of lazy pig brings treats and coffee to his own crime scene.”

“And spills the coffee and laughs because he knows they’ll blame it on the painter.”

“Story of my life.”

The next part was easy. Michelle at Fast Forward – we’d been friends since I gave her a copy of The House at Pooh Corner to exorcise the Disney demons from her daughter’s mind – identified my evidence instantly.

She took it on her tongue for a few seconds, wincing at where it had been, then spit it out onto a napkin and gave it back. “That’s one of Dany’s health cookies. No dairy, no eggs, no sugar. She makes them with tahini. They’re totally unique.”

“So … does anyone order hazelnut coffee and one of these?”

She thought for a minute or two while she poured a few cups of coffee for nervous customers. I was wearing my uniform and everyone was feeling guilty about something.

Michelle made change for someone and turned to the other girl behind the counter. “Angie? Can you think of anyone?”

“Just Bob Bulmer. The Sheriff? But he drinks decaf. Does it matter if it’s decaf?”
            “Not really.”

“Is he in trouble?” Michelle asked.

“No, no. Though you have to wonder about someone who drinks hazelnut decaf.”

“Now what?” Mike asked me later as I drove him back to his job site.

I looked up at the imposing three-story shingled pile, dormers lined up on the steep roof, presided over by the freshly painted widow’s walk. “Now we stake out this place -- and catch him in the act.”

But we were too late. Mike had been working downstairs and hadn’t ventured into the finished bedrooms for weeks. A quick walk-though the second floor told the tale like a tour guide: picture hooks where paintings had hung, end tables with circles in the dust, dents in the carpet where an antique dresser had stood.

Mike looked like he was about to cry. “If we don’t find this stuff before the Binghams show up … Jesus. Someone hates me.”

“Someone’s stalking you,” I said.

“What?”

“It’s the only way they could get in to these houses. You unlock the doors. You disable the alarms.”

“Yeah. But I’m always – oh shit.”

“What?”

“I drive into town for lunch, or to pick up some supplies from Marine, and sometimes I – it’s a hassle locking up and setting the alarms if I’m only going to be gone for half an hour. And also … they monitor the systems. I don’t want my customers knowing when I’m gone or how long I take for lunch. It’s none of their business.”

“And who’s going to know? Or notice?”

“Exactly! This isn’t inner-city Detroit. What is a burglar supposed to do? Try every mansion and hope for an unlocked on and then try every unlocked one for a disconnected alarm?”

“No, Mike. He’s supposed to choose a house painter, track his movements and use the time, however long it is, when he leaves the house open, to do the burglaries. Then the burglar just waits. The homeowners come back in the summer and the painter gets the blame. If he really does hate you, it’s a win-win.”

“So this is about the Bradley?”

Bulmer had pushed a warrant through Town Meeting the year before. He wanted the town to buy him a U.S Army surplus Bradley Fighting Vehicle. Some prominent citizens took his side in the debate including Jonathan Pell, the new CEO of Logran Corporation and a consortium of real estate brokers who were concerned about property values.

But you have to see a Bradley to realize how crazy this idea was. It’s a small tank, perfect for enforcing Martial Law in a conquered city – a deranged and surreal choice for Nantucket.

Mike had said some harsh things about Bulmer – calling him a would-be tin-pot dictator and a fascist blowhard. David Trezize ran Mike’s guest editorial in the Nantucket Shoals, and the link on the little newspaper’s website had been shared more than a thousand times.

The Bradley was voted down by acclamation.

A bad defeat; and Bulmer was famous for his grudges. That sounded like a motive to me. And as Sheriff, Bulmer’s main job was driving around – mostly he delivered summonses. He had plenty of free time for surveillance.

But some wild conjectures, a coffee stain and a handful of cookie crumbs weren’t enough to arrest him for.

And I had another suspect to deal with.

The next day I took Tim to Something Natural. We got a pair of lobster salad sandwiches, some Matt Fee tea and a couple of bags of chips. We drove out to the new standpipe on Washing Pond Road. The gate was open and we cruised past the giant white metal water tank to the grassy verge that overlooked the jumble of houses that edged the western moors. I explained the situation while we ate. The strong south wind nudged my cruiser.

“I didn’t take those books,” he said. “I swear. Where would I even put them? Someone would see them. Carrie would tell on me.”

I nodded, finished my iced tea. “So what were you doing out there?”

“Nothing.”

“Come on. That’s a long bike ride for nothing.”

“Dad!”

“Tell me.”

“It’s private.”

He stared away, out the car window, following a red-tailed hawk as it circled the valley. I was going to have to put this one together myself. Jane had seen him at the bookshelf. The comment about the fore-edge book, must have been a hasty improvisation to cover whatever it was he was really doing there. The sudden interest in antique end paper watercolors had struck me as a little odd anyway. I had studied Jane’s library myself and there was no adolescent contraband there, nothing racy beyond a copy of Lolita. But Jane kept some photographs her ex-husband had taken off her, the only ones where she had ever looked good, or so she said. She was planning to crop one of them for a new dust-jacket portrait. “The whole picture might sell more copies,” she had joked when she showed it to me. She was topless, coming out of the water at Pickle beach, our informal nude bathing strand. And Jane was right – she looked great in the photo - -sea nymph, slim and girlish, perfect fodder for a seventh grade crush.

Tim would never admit to finding that picture and I would never force him to. I needed a new tactic.

“Okay,” I said. “I have to tell Jane something, so let’s think of a reason you might have been out there. Not the real reason – whatever it was. That’s none of my business. As long as you didn’t actually steal anything.”

“Are you kidding? I would never do that.”

I keyed the car and started backing up. “Here’s a lesson from the adult world. If you’re suspected of something, confess to something else. Something not as bad but maybe … a little embarrassing?”

“Like what?”

“Well … Jane has a collection of vintage Barbies at the cottage. Maybe you were playing with them.”

“But those are girls’ toys!”

“Exactly. So you wouldn’t automatically admit it, the initial denial is explained … and no one ever thinks about whatever it was you were really looking at.”

He thought about this as we turned off Washing Pond Road and headed back into town. “You’re sneaky,” he said.

“But for a good cause.”

“Barbies? Really?”

“It’ll be great. Jane will think you’re a budding feminist.”

“I am a budding feminist.”

I patted his knee. “Good for you.”

I was on a roll that week – Mike Henderson’s case came together the next day.

Pat Folger called to tell me he had found squatters in one of the houses he did caretaking for. The illegal tenants were brothers from Ecuador who worked for Quidnet Land Design, one of the biggest gardening firms on the island. Pat knew I was interested in squatters and their stories. These three had been evicted from Bob Bulmer’s house on Essex Road. The area was known for its barracks-style housing, with as many as twenty people crammed into three or four bedrooms, all paying a thousand dollars a month for the privilege of heat, running water and a roof over their heads. It was a great deal for the landlord, though.

So why would Bulmer have evicted them?

Maybe he had an even more profitable venture going. Maybe he needed the space for storage.

But how to find out? I decided to reverse the tactic I had shared with Tim. Bulmer’s barracks housing scheme was illegal, but fairly common, and we cracked down on the worst offenders from time to time. Bob knew he got a free pass from the town because of his law enforcement position. But that was going to change. I called Paul Higgins, our Building Inspector, and he agreed to make a surprise visit to the Essex Road house, looking for safety violations or an overtaxed septic system.

I’d be there to check out the real crime.

Bob had no idea I suspected him of anything beyond some building code violations and so he was happy to give us a tour of his now-empty house.

I found Jane’s fore-edge books prominently displayed on the mantel, between two of her sitting-dog bookends.

Bob waved a pudgy hand around the living room. “No illegal tenants! Are we good?”

I hefted one of Jane’s books. “I’m good, Bob. But you’re busted.”

When I told Jane the story later that night she said “Bullmer, ugh. I think he was rifling through my photographs, too. They’re all in different order now.”

“Does it bother you? Him seeing, you know -- the uncropped versions?”

She shrugged. “A little. But what the hell. Boys will be boys.”

“Right you are.”

I remembered my boy, as we sat by the water tower, his face turned away in shame, and thought, you’ll never know how right.

But that secret was safe with me.