The Shell Collector Read online

  I asked over dinner the night before what the plan was for today, if it involved more diving. “In a way,” Ness had cryptically answered. He refused to tell me details of our plans and reminded me of my promise not to skip ahead. All he would say, again, was that we were following a natural progression in his discovery of the lace murex shells. I told him I needed to know if that journey ended with us breaking the law, that I didn’t want to be any part of that. Ness had grown quiet. Dour. He said I could leave any time I wanted, that he would make no such promises.

  After dinner, I considered calling Agent Cooper to check in, to let him know that Ness seemed sure of himself, that he seemed to be leading me somewhere, and that he had twice now somewhat admitted that what he was doing was illegal. Instead, I wrote some notes in my laptop up in the widow’s watch, jotting down memories for my piece before they faded with time. But the writing session turned into journaling. It turned into an admission of my wavering certainty.

  The shells were obvious fakes, but the motive doesn’t make any sense. Ness has more money than God, more status than most politicians, and more notoriety than any film star—and he seems to care little for any of it. What he has in spades is a passion for the sea—a passion I’m very familiar with. Perhaps the shells are a way of sharing that passion? Educational tools? But that’s even more ridiculous. It’s too much trouble, and it doesn’t explain the shock I saw on his face when I pulled out that box, or the hurt he felt at his friend having taken the shells from him.

  The ornate and intricate way he’s going about giving me the answer—this retracing of some journey that led him to the shells—is a hint. He’s putting off the inevitable. Delaying. And yet his enthusiasm seems genuine. So Ness either has some master plan, or the man has no grip on reality. I came here wanting to believe the latter, but last night I confided to my journal that the former was at least some dim possibility.

  No matter what, I can already feel sadness at having to leave this place, this beach, this small home on the dunes. I was hesitant and wary of coming here, but now the estate has its claws in me.

  I start coffee and take a quick shower, the sea-glass bricks muted this time by the dark clouds outside. The handful of ingredients in the fridge force me to cook eggs-in-a-hole, a staple of my youth. With a tall glass, I punch out a perfect circle in two slices of bread, butter up both sides, then throw them in a pan and crack an egg in each hole. The removed discs of bread get toasted with a lot of butter. There’s no jam in the fridge, but I find honey in a cabinet. Fending for myself makes this place feel a little mine. I dream of spending a month here to work on that novel I keep saying I’ll finish. I wonder if every journalist who has ever stayed the night has thought the exact same thing.

  Still no sign of Ness. I eat at the small table by the window, propping open Treasure Island by tucking one side of the book under the edge of my plate and laying a knife across the other. The rain is violent. I can easily imagine the sea storm described in the book. The house becomes a rocking ship, and it’s hard to say if the sounds of the crashing waves are out beyond my door or in my imagination. I glance down at the beach, and that’s when I see the note.

  It’s inside a plastic bag, which has been wedged between the doors. I never locked up the night before—the note must’ve been wedged there while I slept. I retrieve it, pat the bag dry on my robe, and sit on the edge of the bed to read. I glance at the signature first to make sure it’s from Ness. It is.

  Maya,

  Sorry to do this, but that something I mentioned yesterday that might come up - it came up. We’ve still got plenty of time to show you everything you need. Should be back after lunch. Make yourself at home up at the house. Lots of movies in the TV room. Sorry there’s no cable. Numbers for Monique and Vincent below. Dial 9, and you’ll get Security. Maybe enjoy the day off and write nasty things about me!

  -Ness

  Phone numbers for Monique and Vincent are jotted below his name. I feel a roller coaster of emotions. First comes the disappointment that whatever he had planned for the day has been called off. But then I taste the excitement of open potential, of a day with absolutely nothing to do. I haven’t had one in ages. I could sit on the bench upstairs and read a novel all day. I could write. I could say damn the rain and put on my wetsuit and go for a snorkel to add to my collection of shells. The boundless opportunities have me seeing this as a blessing in disguise. A vacation within a vacation. I could easily not leave this little house perched on the dunes until the sun goes down. I can subsist on toast and eggs.

  But a glance up at the main house crushes any such fantasy of me taking a day off. There’s a reason I haven’t taken one in ages. My mind won’t stop spinning, assembling my next story, and while the healthy thing to do would be to stay in and rest, to not set foot in that house, it would be unprofessional of me not to go up there. A dereliction of my duty as a reporter and a missed chance to make up to Agent Cooper for losing the shells. Ness has formally invited me to make myself at home, to rummage through his movie collection—and who knows what else.

  I check the time. Not even seven yet. The note says he’ll be back after lunch. I could go snoop for two hours without any chance of seeing him. And even if I do, he has invited me in. This is as big a mistake with journalists as it is with vampires.

  Hanging my robe up to dry, I pull on shorts and a t-shirt, stuff I don’t mind getting wet. I’ll find a towel up at the house. The side door is more out of the wind, and I’m just steeling myself for the dash across the boardwalk when I consider the chances Monique will show up to tidy the main house and catch me poking around. I turn and grab Ness’s note. My hall pass.

  I feel invincible. The journalist in me can’t believe my good fortune. Carte blanche in the inner sanctum of the subject of my exposé, and the prime suspect in an FBI investigation into shell forgery. I can hear Henry and Cooper both urging me along, rooting for me, grins on their faces.

  I wait for the next gust of wind to pass. Sheets of rain roll in like an ocean swell. A hiss moves down the side of the house, and I slip through the door and run, bare feet slapping through puddles, wind and rain pushing at my back, feeling a temptation to squeal from the cold and from how quickly I’m absolutely drenched.

  Mindful of slipping, I keep a hand on the rail. Up one flight of steps, across another boardwalk, and then the three steep flights to the covered deck—past the landing with the lounge chairs and fire pit, past the al fresco dining table—until I’m in the would-be shelter of the house’s generous overhang. But the sideways reach of the heavy wind whips the rain across my back even here.

  I don’t have time to contemplate, to knock, to peek inside. I test the door, find it unlocked, and hurry through. Fighting the shoving of a fierce gust, I manage to get the door closed behind me.

  Dripping wet and shivering, I call for Ness and then Monique. No answer. My shirt is soaked, and I see that the dark bra was a poor choice. My legs are covered in goose bumps. The AC and my wet clothes threaten to turn me into a giant ice cube as a puddle begins to form at my feet.

  I hurry to the guest bath and find just a sink and a toilet. There’s a small and useless hand towel threaded through a ring—the decorative kind you can never tell if you should actually use. The kind that barely absorbs water anyway.

  I look elsewhere. The house is a maze. I’ve only seen parts of it: the overhang room, the main hall, the foyer, the kitchen. A breezeway leads off to another wing. The windows are all closed, turning the breezeway into a sheltered glass hall. I follow it, leaving wet footprints behind me, hoping to find guest quarters with proper bathrooms and proper towels. This is already going badly. But it’ll be a long time before Ness returns. I hope.

  At the end of the hall, I pass through a reading room. Bay windows jut out toward the sea. There are shells everywhere: on the walls, in glass cabinets, decorating every surface. Shelling books are scattered on a table. There’s an open sketchbook with a detailed drawing of some torus. I
can look later. My teeth are chattering. I need to find a thermostat and turn off the AC.

  Past the reading room, I enter a bedroom twice the size of my entire apartment. It has its own sitting area with a fireplace, a breakfast nook, a desk in a far corner, matching Tahitian-style furniture, and flowing white drapes that frame a view of the beach. I can see why the house is arranged as a scattering of joined rooms along the dunes. Every room has a sweeping view of the sea.

  Through a door on the far side of the room, I pass through a walk-in closet and, finally, a bathroom. Towels. Hallelujah. I grab one and pat myself dry, squeezing my hair in the folds, and realize my clothes are not going to dry for a while. There’s a robe hanging on the back of the door. I close the door, strip naked, and don the robe. Wringing out my shorts in the sink, I remember the note and fish it out. The piece of paper is soaked through, the blue ink turned to blotches. It’s barely readable. But Ness is the only person who could get angry about my being here, and he knows he wrote it. I lay the note out to dry, wring out my shirt and underwear, and drape everything over the shower door.

  Rather than snoop around in Ness’s robe, I decide to borrow clothes from the closet. Wrapping my hair up in a fresh towel, I step back into the wardrobe. I find a shirt and a pair of shorts. Both will be too big, but they’ll keep me decent. I’m pulling on the shorts when a small voice tells me I’m making a mistake, that I need to slow down, that the rain and my wet clothes are a blessing.

  No one can blame me for coming up to the main house. I’m a guest. Our plans got rained out, and my clothes were soaked through. Of course I would want to find a change of dry clothes. Who wouldn’t?

  I put the shorts and shirt back and pretend I never saw them. If I’m caught rummaging around, I can say I’m looking for something dry to put on. I can’t use that excuse if I’m already wearing something. It’s perfect. Agent Cooper would be proud.

  Back in the bedroom, I go through the nightstand first. Two books with dog-eared pages, one on Tahitian wayfinding, the other on rogue waves. Both are from university presses. Expensive and dull. There’s a pen and a notepad, but nothing written on the first page, and the indentations are too faint to make out what was written before. A tangle of wires and two electrical chargers, nothing interesting.

  I try the desk on the other side of the bed, passing by a display case full of rare shells. The problem with looking for excellent fakes in this house is that there are museum-quality pieces everywhere. Even if I had my loupe, the last specimens overcame close scrutiny by both me and the FBI. What I need are notes, passwords to his email accounts, letters from accomplices, something like that.

  The small desk mostly turns up pictures of Ness’s daughter. They’re everywhere—in frames arranged across the desk and loose in the drawers. They start with her as a toddler and progress to a gap-toothed smile and then to a gangly young woman on the verge of puberty.

  The rain outside is a steady roar. The metal roof rattles from the downpour, and overflowing gutters create a veil of water so thick that it’s impossible to see the beach, hard to even see the end of the deck. It’s also impossible to hear anyone in the house.

  “Uh, hello?” a voice calls. “Ness?”

  My heart drops. I close the desk drawers in a panic and hurry toward the bathroom. I’m halfway there when someone steps through the bedroom door. A woman. I’m so startled, it takes a moment before I recognize her. Victoria Wilde. Though she goes by Carter now, I think.

  “Who are you?” she asks.

  I freeze in place. Ness’s ex-wife hasn’t changed at all from the last tabloid pictures I saw of her, years ago. She has on a black dress, heels, a white pearl necklace. She appears to be dressed up for some event, maybe a funeral. I start to answer her, to explain what I’m doing there, when she raises a hand.

  “Never mind. I don’t want to know. Where is Ness?”

  “I—I don’t know,” I stammer.

  “Woke up to an empty bed, huh?” She crosses the room toward the desk I just left. “Let me tell you, that’s the good Ness. Try living with him for eight years. It’s when you’re falling asleep in an empty bed that you’ve got trouble.”

  “I’m not sleeping with him,” I say. I feel young all of a sudden. Guilty. Full of excuses. It all comes from having been caught, but the bad thing I was doing wasn’t the bad thing I’m suspected of doing. The desire for truth won’t let me just shut up. “I’m a reporter,” I say.

  “Of course you are, darling.” Victoria rummages through the same desk that I was just rummaging through, and while neither of us belongs there, she makes it look okay. I hear another voice somewhere in the house. Victoria is writing a note, presumably for Ness.

  “No really,” I say. “I’m with the Times. I’m doing a piece on Mr. Wilde—”

  Victoria turns and looks me up and down for the first time. I touch the towel on my head, then close the robe tighter across my chest and see that Ness’s initials are embroidered there. This looks bad.

  “Research, I suppose.” She waves a pen up and down at me, then points it at the bed and raises an eyebrow. Part of me wants to blurt out that yeah, we’re having epic sex, and he wants me to move in with him. But it’s a vindictive part of me that I’m immediately ashamed of. I just want to hurt her because her presence is making me feel like a bad person.

  “Holly’s riding lessons are rained out.” Victoria jabs the pen at the window. “Obviously,” she adds. “And I can’t watch her. I’m already going to be late for my luncheon. Make sure Ness gets this note. And don’t worry, she can take care of herself until he gets back.”

  “His daughter?” I ask.

  “My daughter,” Victoria says. She slams the pen down on top of the note, leans on the desk for a moment, then laughs at something and shakes her head. She turns toward the door. I want to say something, to ask her to stay for a coffee, to talk to her, get to know something about her, when she turns, takes in the room one more time and my presence in it, and says, “Don’t rearrange the furniture.”

  “What?” I’m still clutching the robe tightly around me.

  She waves her hand at the room, at the whole house. “Just leave it like this. You’ll want to make it your own, but he won’t give a shit about you in a week and he’ll just have his staff put it all back where it was. All the little dents in the carpet will vacuum out in a few days. So save yourself the time.”

  “I—”

  “And another thing: Don’t let his smile fool you. It’s a shell. Ness is not a happy man. He never will be. You’ll drive yourself crazy thinking you can change that.”

  “Look—” I say.

  “Oh, you’ll think I’m a bitch for a month or so. You’ll hate me because I got the closest to him. But in another month or two, you’ll remember this conversation, realize I was right, realize I was being nice to you, trying to save you, and you’ll thank me. You might even write me a nice note.” She smiles. “I have quite a few of those.”

  And then she turns and walks away before I can tell her that she’s wrong. Before I can thank her right then. Before I can tell her that she’s confirming everything I already think about the man, giving me the power to resist my baser urges while reminding me why I’m here. That if I knew where to send it, I’d write her that note right now. And I am newly resolved to reach out to her for an interview before I publish my final piece. I now have my in: I can tell her she was right, that I want to thank her in person, and that I want to know more about Ness’s unhappiness, where it comes from, and why he keeps it so cleverly hidden.

  I’m running all this through my head when someone says, “I’m hungry.”

  I refocus and see the gangly girl from Ness’s pictures standing in the doorway. Holly. His daughter.

  “You’re the new one, huh?” she asks. And before I can answer: “What can you make me for breakfast?”

  24

  “I’m Maya,” I say. I reach out my hand, and Holly studies it a moment before accepting. />
  “Riding practice got canceled,” she says.

  “So I heard.”

  “Mom says I’m not old enough to stay at our house by myself, but she leaves me alone here all the time. I think if I get hurt, she wants it to be on his property.”

  “Or maybe if you break something, she wants it to be his,” I suggest. I smile and hope she knows it’s a joke.

  Holly smiles back. And then I feel a pang of sadness at how this seems normal to her, talking to a strange woman in her father’s bedroom, a woman who is wearing her father’s robe, and asking that woman to fix her something to eat. Thankfully, she turns and leads me toward the kitchen, and I’m able to use the robe’s lapel to dab at my eye.

  “Let’s cook something outrageous,” Holly calls out above the noisy rain. “How about a peanut butter omelet? With a cranberry chocolate milkshake. We’ll get flour everywhere.”

  “I don’t think any of those things take flour,” I say. I re-knot Ness’s robe around me as I follow her to the kitchen. No use changing into his clothes now, no use explaining. Everyone has already made up their minds.

  “The flour won’t go in anything we make,” Holly explains. “It’s just because. And if we ask Monique nicely, she won’t clean up after us. Dad’ll have to do it.”

  Holly cracks the fridge and pulls out eggs and a carton of chocolate milk. Even with the note suggesting I make myself at home, it feels strange to rummage around Ness’s kitchen. Especially in his robe and with his daughter.

  “You don’t think your dad will mind me raiding his fridge, do you?” I ask.

  Holly turns and looks at me with stern seriousness. “Dad says when he’s dead and gone, all of this will be mine.” She waves her arms at his house and the estate beyond. This proclamation seems to come out of nowhere. I’m trying to make sense of it when she continues: “So how do we know he isn’t already dead?”