Off Season Read Free

story to the next, not from a feeder service, not from someone to shoot it.
    Blackballed
, Ben had said. He blamed Addie, of course, saying that the barracuda of an agent must have had more power than they’d once thought.
    Life in the limelight, for all its glamour and glitz, was vicious and fleeting and all a big game.
    Yet for reasons she did not understand, Jill did not pick up the phone now, return Addie’s call, and simply say “Thanks, but no thanks.”
    After hanging up the phone, Ben had attacked the lobster trap with gusto. Some rope webbing for the “door,” some slats for the sides, and suddenly it looked like the picture in the book he’d found at the library, a picture similar to the one Mindy said she’d downloaded from the Internet but that he was too damn stubborn to follow because he didn’t like computers and didn’t trust that dotcom stuff.
    So now the coveted trap was complete, and it looked damn fine, and it was only eight-thirty—too early to go home to the empty house in Edgartown: empty, of course, except for Amy. Unlike Jill’s son, Jeff, Amy had not fled for college in England as soon as their mother and Ben announced marriage plans.
    He could go to his own daughter’s over in Tisbury. With a husband and two kids, Carol Ann had become a good old-fashioned cook. Maybe she could rustle up some leftovers for her old man.
    He supposed what he should do was work on the plans for Sea Grove. Or at least try and determine where he was going to find room for the kids to build these damn lobster traps now that he’d “mastered” the craft.
    Maybe some coffee would help.
    He stood up and stretched, then headed to the tiny galley kitchen he’d installed for emergencies like this. As he scooped coffee into the old aluminum pot, he thought he heard voices. And leaves rustling outside.
    “Hello?” he called out. No answer. He shrugged and put the pot on the two-burner stove, when he heard voices again. “What the hell?” he muttered. He set down the pot and walked to the window.
    He peered out the window into the darkness. It was, of course, impossible to see anything because on the Vineyard darkness was darkness, especially once summer had rolled into fall. He snapped off the inside light and hit the switch for the floodlights.
    In the small parking lot, parked behind his prized ’47 black Buick, was a police car. One man had already emerged and was leaning against the car, looking toward the museum. Then the driver’s door opened, and a man Ben recognized as Hugh Talbot got out.
    Ben squinted, as if squinting would tell him what the hell Hugh, the sheriff of Gay Head, was doing there. If Ben had been home at Edgartown and not at Menemsha, his first thought would have been that the museum had burned down. Again. The mere thought spun his memory back to that ache of a day when he had looked across the ridge of dunes and seen Menemsha House enveloped in red-orange flames, when fire had brought pain and anguish and death to the island.
    Instinctively, he backed from the window. Then he noticed another man cut across the lawn and march toward the police car. Even in the darkness, the heavy gait and untrimmed beard made the man recognizable: it was Dave Ashenbach, Ben’s unpleasant museum neighbor, Mindy’s grandfather, the man who had finally stopped grumbling about “trespassing,” or so Ben had thought.
    He watched Hugh and Ashenbach exchange what appeared to be sharp, angry words. Then Ben sighed andwalked toward the door. Whatever was going on, he figured it was no coincidence that this small crowd had gathered in his parking lot. Opening the door, he adjusted his Red Sox cap and stepped onto the front steps without his boots, with only his heavy gray socks on his feet.
    “Gentlemen,” he called, “what brings you here on this fair night?”
    The men stopped talking and looked in his direction. No one said anything.
    Scowling, he stepped down and padded toward the men.
    Hugh raised a