Page 54 of The Castaways
“Bleu burger well done, please. Fries. Coleslaw with extra horseradish. And start me with something… the jalapeno poppers.”
“Will do,” the waitress said.
“Jesus, Ed,” Addison said.
“I know,” the Chief said. “It’s a one-way ticket on the Heart-burn Express.”
Addison swilled the rest of his drink as if it were water and jostled the ice.
“Jesus yourself,” the Chief said.
“Yeah,” Addison said. “Phoebe thinks I have a problem.”
“Do you?”
“Have a problem?” He laughed joylessly. “I have a few.”
“I’m going to be honest with you,” the Chief said. “You don’t look that great.”
“Am I supposed to look great? It hasn’t even been a month. Can you believe it? It’s only been twenty-six days, but it’s like our whole reality has changed.”
“You’re taking it hard?”
“Is there another way to take it?” Addison’s eyes welled with tears. The Chief had seen it all during his seventeen years on the force, but one of his least favorite things was watching a grown man cry. He thought about all the phone calls between Tess and Addison on the day before Tess died. Five phone calls from Addison to Tess on the final morning. He had been trying to reach her. But why? Along with the tox report and what to do about Andrea, this was one of the things the Chief turned over incessantly in his mind. There had to be an explanation. Should he ask?
Among the four men, Greg and Addison had been the closest friends. They were the outgoing, party-all-the-time type who attended bachelor parties and took golf weekends, who went fishing and sailing and played bocce on the beach, clinking beer bottles after a good lie and offering high fives. When Addison got Celtics tickets or front row to see Jimmy Buffett, he always took Greg. Greg was his little buddy, his much younger fraternity brother; Addison told a joke and Greg was the first to laugh. That, perhaps, was the reason Addison looked like a jigsaw puzzle with a couple of pieces missing. He’d lost his sidekick, his Sundance Kid.
The Chief said, “Andrea’s a mess. What about Phoebe?”
“Phoebe?” Addison said. He sucked down the first third of his second drink and said, “The strange thing is that Phoebe is just fine. She’s actually better than she’s been in a long time. I’m sure everyone thought Phoebe would collapse, this would be the last straw, but she’s great. She’s exercising, eating, smiling.”
“Mmmm,” the Chief said. He had seen Phoebe on the Fourth and had noticed how luminous she looked. “And how goes it with the estate?”
“The estate?” Addison looked perplexed. “Oh, fine. We’re going to list the house at seven-fifty.”
The Chief nodded. There were forty or fifty follow-up questions to ask about the house and the furnishings and the personal effects, the business of the deaths, the selling off and cleaning up of two full lives, but the Chief wanted to ask about the phone calls. Who knew when he would get another chance? He was a policeman; he had to know. He would be direct, no funny business, no innuendo.
“I noticed there were a bunch of calls from you to Tess on the morning she died. Five, to be exact.”
Addison stared. The eye contact was reassuring, because what did a liar do? He dropped his eyes to his drink.
“Was something going on?” the Chief asked.
“Going on?”
“Happening? Was she thinking of selling the house or renting a place for her college roommate or…” He was giving Addison a chance to lie here, and put his mind at ease, at least temporarily. “Why so many phone calls?”
Addison shrugged; his stare did not relent. “We were friends.”
“Well, obviously,” the Chief said. “We were all friends. But why were you trying to reach her? Five phone calls in half an hour. What for?”
“What for?”
“Yeah.”
Addison hunched his shoulders. “What are you asking me, Ed?”
“I’m asking what you wanted to talk to her about. If you saw half a dozen calls from me to Tess, you would want to know what was going on, wouldn’t you? You would want to know what we were talking about.”
