remember. Do you have a doctor?”
I shook my head and then, since his eyes were on the road, bleated a short no as well. My doctors were in Manhattan. So was my hairdresser. I wouldn’t be caught dead getting a haircut in Sakonnet Bay. I considered whether to mention this, undoubtedly for perverse reasons—having already begun to irritate people today, I now couldn’t stop myself. I heard a beep.
“That’s my pager,” said McKee. “Ignore it. Mynten?”
“Excuse me?” I turned to find that he was offering me a hard candy in a wrapper with a twist at each end.
“What’s this?”
“An orange-mint thing. A throat lozenge. My wife buys them wholesale by the gross.”
“Thank you.” It didn’t taste bad, somewhere between medicine and a sweet: even better, sucking it gave me something to do. McKee removed his hat, balanced it on the armrest between our seats, and I got a good look at him for the first time.
He seemed about thirty-two. Five years younger than I. Maybe not. Maybe thirty-four. My obsessing was taking a new turn, compulsive age-guessing. He radiated health, almost glowed with well-being. That’s what struck me the most: how robust the sergeant looked, with fair skin and ruddy cheeks, as if he’d just come in for milk and cookies after riding his bike on a cold November day. From the side, he was compelling, mostly owing to an elegant, pronounced jawline. Less impressive from the front, I decided, as he glanced over. Something was out of sync about his features. Thick brows jutted over brown eyes that were possibly too close together, or perhaps the problem was that his nose, while straight, was slightly too wide. No, he was not quite handsome, but boyishly winning.
His dark brown hair was styled for Sunday school: short, side part, front combed up and over into a stiff wave. He might be excessively neat. He might also use mousse. Borrow his wife’s. A secret vanity. I imagined him pulsing a bit into his palm, rubbing his hands together, and then, in one motion, coating his hair from front to back. I must have been recovering, or I wouldn’t have been speculating about the officer and his hair products.
“Where’d you get those dumb ideas about deer?”
“Excuse me?”
“Deer don’t cross the road looking for love. Pumpkins, maybe acorns.” He was referring to the article I’d written last week about the increase in car accidents caused by lovesick deer or, depending on one’s point of view, the increase in the number of deer killed by careless drivers.
“As a matter of fact, deer do travel farther during mating season, and when they pair off they’ll cross the road to get to …” I couldn’t think how to describe it. “Their love nest, I guess.”
“Love doesn’t enter into it.”
Oh God, was he a hater of hyperbole? A stickler for accuracy? Like, I have to say, my ex-husband. I wasn’t going to concede, so I shut up. The beeper went off again.
“Isn’t that for you?” I asked.
“I’ve got a security company, and when I’m on duty my brother’s supposed to pick up. Don’t know where he is.” He looked exasperated by this problem. Did it occur often? He extricated his beeper from his front pants pocket, lifting his rear off the seat to do so. He was chunky around the midsection. “You should write about DUIs instead of Mary Burns.” This was a reference to another column I’d written, about a woman who had reported her underpants stolen from a dryer in the laundromat. I hadn’t realized until now how carefully my work was read. By everyone? Or just by him?
“DUIs. I’ll suggest that to the editor.”
“Under-age drinking, too. That’s another problem.”
I jumped on him. “Are you talking about my son?”
“sam?”
“Do you know him?”
“Everyone knows him, he’s got no hair. Hangs out with Deidre. I wasn’t referring to him.”
“Oh.” Everyone knows Sam? No, everyone knows of Sam. Points out the weirdo. Speculates about him. And who was Deidre? Did McKee know more about my child than I did?
He tapped some more numbers into his beeper and studied the response. “How’s your ankle doing?” He turned and smiled. This had the effect of a car’s brights coming at me on a dark night.
“My ankle’s fine.” If I didn’t move, it didn’t hurt. “I’m fine.”
“You say that a lot. ‘I’m fine.’” He imitated me, catching the cadence of the brave little soldier.
“I’m sorry I was rude to you before. In the market. I truly am sorry.” I changed the subject and spoke in what I hoped was an especially bland manner. “Is someone’s alarm going off?”
“Yes. I need to take a detour. Five minutes is all.”
So he wanted a favor. That gorgeous smile was manipulation, his ace in the hole.
“Are you in pain?” he asked.
“No. Absolutely not.” I urged him to go ahead, take his detour, not to think twice about it. I practically slobbered goodwill. It was a way to regain equal footing.
“You can’t write about this,” he said.
“Of course not.” We both knew why. It wasn’t police business.
McKee turned left, heading south of Main. He informed Dispatch that he was taking a short break, and we sped through the posh part of town. In less than two minutes we reached Ocean Drive, where residences could house battalions.
Although most of these mansions, spaced football fields apart, were uninhabited in the off-season, the air was alive with electronic buzz. Upkeep. Gardeners, carpenters, contractors—their vans and trucks lined the road. The noisy equipment provided an affectionate reminder of jackhammers in New York City streets. My ears were at home here.
We entered a narrow driveway between two fat round bushes. On an identifying marker, NICHOLAS was spelled out in brass letters on white wood. McKee slowed the car to a crawl.
“I don’t hear an alarm.”
“It’s silent, but in any event, it’s not registering on the pager. Probably someone leaving the house tripped it and screwed up a few times before setting it right.” His voice was relaxed, but his posture alert, attention shifting left to right. Perhaps someone was lurking behind the stately trees along the gravel drive.
“Why do these people have alarms, anyway?” As a devotee of the police log, I knew that Mary Burns’s purloined underpants was about as serious as crime got.
“Who knows.” He laughed. “They like to spend money. They like to imagine someone’s after their stuff. They like to keep my business going.” He snapped open the ashtray; it was jammed with old Mynten wrappers. As we wedged ours in, the shade trees ended, releasing us into a bright sun that illuminated a blanket of pea green. Couture grass. It stretched for what looked like a quarter-mile, interrupted by a few freestanding curved and clipped hedges. On a small upward slope stood a two-story gabled house
