Page 2 of Swan Song

Addison makes a toast. “To our fearless leader!” Everyone raises a glass; Ed is honored but also a little embarrassed. He drinks his red wine—he thinks Addison might have refilled his glass without his noticing—and suddenly he grows reflective.

He moved to Nantucket from Swampscott thirty-five years earlier when the chief of police position opened. People had warned him that policing on an island would be different than on the mainland. It was like a small town except that it was thirty miles out to sea, so there was no getting away. This has been tricky enough to navigate even in the off-season, and during Ed’s tenure, the year-round population has doubled. But come June, the island explodes with summer residents, short-term renters, and day-trippers, some of whom feel inclined to rent mopeds despite not having a clue how to operate them. There’s traffic to deal with, scores of parking tickets on the daily, kids from the cities and fancy suburbs with their designer drugs and entitled attitudes giving his officers lip.

Beyond that, there’s real trouble—domestics, vandalism, drunk driving, overdoses, accidental deaths. Ed worked a case out in Monomoy half a dozen years earlier that he still believes was murder, though they never quite figured it out.

Their server shows up with a dessert sampler for the table—an apple crostata with cinnamon gelato, baba au rhum, and cannoli.

Phoebe takes a bite of the crostata and says, “This tastes like fall.”

“Blasphemy,” Delilah says. “There’s still an entire month of summer left.”

Ed is considering a cannoli, but he’s afraid he’s pushed the limits of his diet far enough. Andrea is the one who places a cannoli on his plate, her cheeks flushed from the wine. She leans over and kisses him on the lips, a good kiss, one that promises more later. “It’s your special night.”

Ed gazes around the table, and his eyes land on Kacy. She looks wistful, maybe even lonesome; she keeps checking her phone. It’s funny, the Chief thinks. No matter how old your kids get, you still worry about them. Kacy and Coco were close all summer, a Millennial Laverne and Shirley, but things between them seem to have cooled. When the Chief asked Andrea if Kacy and Coco had a falling-out, Andrea said, “They’re grown women, Ed.” Whatever that meant.

After coffee is served, there’s another surprise. Their server turns up the music—Harry Connick Jr. singing “It Had to Be You”—and moves the other tables so they have room to dance. Andrea takes Ed’s hand. “Come on, Chief, let’s show them how it’s done.”

Phoebe and Addison join them on the improvised dance floor, then Jeffrey and Delilah. In that moment, the word retirement, a term that previously evoked only dread for the Chief, seems filled with promise. The weight of the island’s problems will be lifted from his shoulders. He and Andrea can travel; he’ll be able to go out fishing on Eric’s charter boat whenever he wants—maybe he’ll even take a job as Eric’s first mate. They’ll enjoy other nights like this when the Chief can have more than half a glass of wine.

He’ll be free.

“Are you sure you won’t get sick of me hanging around all the time?” he asks Andrea. Before she can answer, Ed’s phone buzzes in his pocket.

Andrea groans. “Please just let it go.”

He checks the screen. It’s the station, line four, which means it’s an emergency.

“I’m sorry,” Ed says. “I have to—”

He steps off the dance floor, lifts the phone to one ear, and plugs his other ear with two fingers. It’s his dispatcher, the aptly named Jennifer Speed, whom they just call Speed. The woman defines efficiency. “Do you want the bad news or the bad news?” she asks.

The Chief doesn’t want any news and Speed knows it. He has one hundred hours left as Nantucket’s police chief. “What is it?”

“There’s a fire out in Pocomo,” Speed says. “The NFD is on the scene. I talked to Stu, who says it’s a total loss. Burned to the ground.”

“Pocomo?” the Chief says. “It’s not…”

“The Richardsons’ house, yes, it is,” Speed says. She pauses. “Was.”

The Chief closes his eyes. He feels Andrea’s hand on his back.

“What else?” he says.

“Their assistant, woman by the name of Colleen Coyle?”

“Coco, yes,” the Chief says. “I know her. She’s a friend of Kacy’s.”

“Apparently the Richardsons were having a party on their yacht when someone called them about the smoke at their house, and they hightailed it back. The girl, Coco, was on the boat, but when they got back to the mooring, she was gone. As in, no longer on the boat.”

“No longer on the boat?” the Chief says. “Where did she go?”

“Nobody knows,” Speed says. “She’s missing.”

“Is she the only one?”

“As far as I know, everyone else on the boat is accounted for, and Captain…”

“Lamont?” the Chief says.

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