Nantucket Grand by Steven Axelrod Page B

firebugs in the family?”
    â€œNothing. No one.”
    â€œYou have no idea why someone might have done this?”
    â€œPeople do crazy things all the time, Chief Kennis. Maybe my house was built on an Indian graveyard. Maybe someone thought aliens were going to be using it for a landing pad. Why speculate? I’d rather look forward and rebuild. I may install some surveillance cameras this time around.”
    I stood up. “Well, thanks. If you think of anything else, give me a call.”
    â€œI certainly will.”
    I doubted it. He had lied about almost everything else—at least that was my instinct, and I trusted it. But why? That was the question. Who was he protecting, beside the houseguest who ducked out when I arrived? Or maybe protecting her was enough.
    I needed to find out who she was, without actually arresting Andrew Thayer. I could set one of the junior officers, maybe Barnaby Toll, to watch the house, and get another one to take down all the license plate numbers in the town parking lot. We might find something out if we ran them all, and it would give the young cops something to do besides writing out parking tickets and answering prank calls.
    This mystery woman was my only lead. Without her, my interviews with Thayer were useless: one more set of evasions and half-truths delivered by one more venture capitalist with things to hide—most them, probably all of them, irrelevant.
    For the moment, I let it go. My day’s work was done. I went home to take a shower and find some civilian clothes. Miranda had the kids that night and I actually had a social engagement, the first one in weeks.

Chapter Ten
    At Emily Grimshaw’s Salon
    I didn’t expect to find a clue in that cluttered, hothouse living room, crowded with would-be poets and authors, but until that night I never thought a poem could be a death threat.
    Still, if anyone was going to compose such a document, the late Todd Macy’s son, Chris, was the guy. A spoiled brat with father issues, though the term probably applied just as well to Lord Byron or Ezra Pound, both of whom (it turned out) Chris used in the poetry workshop he ran at the Community School. Mason Taylor took Chris’ workshop and thought he was a genius. There was nothing I could do about that. Maybe he was a good influence when he was sober.
    The poem was an odd piece of work, but so were most of the stories and poems people performed at Emily Grimshaw’s house. And almost all of them concerned some sort of tortured family relationship. One began: “Daddy, Daddy, Daddy, why are your eyes so silent, why does your mouth refuse me, why are your broken hands fisted with grief?”
    There was a limit to how much of that stuff you could listen to, but I still enjoyed attending these soirees. I liked the Bohemian atmosphere, the books and trinkets piled on every surface, the smell of incense. Emily made excellent hors d’oeuvres, and served good wine. She was proud of her little salon and always had a few young writers around that she was mentoring; most of them strapping twenty-year-old boys. They adored Emily and did most of the heavy work, moving furniture and setting up the little apartment for the art installations and readings. It looked like Chris Macy was one of them these days. He had the tormented look she preferred.
    He was hauling the big lectern to the arched opening between the bedroom and the living room when I pushed inside out of the cold. Emily, bulky and intense, was talking to Jane Stiles, while Jane’s six-year-old son tugged at her pant leg.
    â€œI expect a real poem to change my life ,” Emily was saying. She stepped back from the door. “Oh, hello, Chief—you’re late. We’re about to start. Shut the door and introduce yourself to anyone you don’t know. We have some newbies tonight, and you need to assure them they won’t be arrested. I’m going to open more wine.”
    She