“Me,” Andrea says.

“That sounds heavenly,” Leslee says. “Thank you for inviting me to play today.” She reaches across the net to tap paddles with Andrea. Delilah is standing in the middle of the court, hands on hips, feeling as indignant as John McEnroe at Wimbledon in 1981. You cannot be serious! Delilah let the other infractions go—they were ambiguous; was one of Leslee’s feet in the kitchen? Hard to say—but during match point she blatantly volleyed while she was in the kitchen. It’s cheating!

Never again, Delilah thinks. Never again are we inviting this woman to play pickleball with us.

“Delilah?” Phoebe prompts. “Swimming?”

Delilah would love nothing more than a dip in Phoebe’s pool but she won’t voluntarily spend one more second with Leslee Richardson. As she’s about to decline, Leslee says, “You can all help me plan our Fourth of July fireworks party aboard Hedonism. I want it to be smaller than the Pink and White Party. More exclusive.”

Delilah is about to inform Leslee that they always watch the Fourth of July fireworks on Steps Beach, but she knows that will be futile. Leslee is throwing a party aboard her fabulous yacht, and of course the others will want to go. Of course Delilah wants to go. She has long dreamed of watching the fireworks from out on the water.

“Swimming sounds good. I need to cool down,” Delilah says as, grudgingly, she taps Leslee’s paddle. Apparently, they’re stuck with this woman.

20. Thursday, August 22, 9:30 P.M.

The Chief’s phone rings—Lucy Shields, the harbormaster.

“I’ve ordered the chopper out of Woods Hole,” she says.

“Thank you, Lucy.” He turns to Zara and Lamont. “Coast Guard is sending out a chopper.”

Lamont looks skyward. “I wish they would take me with them. I could find her; I know I could.”

The Chief looks at Zara. Is she thinking what he’s thinking? “We should probably go talk to the Richardsons,” the Chief says. Maybe Zara is right and he should step away from the investigation, he thinks. He had hoped never to speak to Leslee Richardson again.

“I have another idea,” Zara says. She takes the Chief’s arm, leads him away, lowers her voice, and says, “Let’s talk to Kacy first.”

“Kacy?” he says. “She wasn’t on the boat.”

“But they were friends. Close friends, Dixon said.”

“True.”

“A woman tells her girlfriends everything,” Zara says.

Ed flashes to Andrea whispering with Phoebe and Delilah at Ventuno. “Good point.”

They find Kacy right where they left her, but her facade has cracked—tears stream down her face, her hair has slipped from its chignon, her nose is running. Ed considers calling Andrea and asking her to come; this is a girl who needs her mother. Kacy looks up, wipes the tears from under each eye with a manicured fingernail, and sniffs. “She’s somewhere. That’s the thing. She’s somewhere.”

Zara takes a seat next to Kacy, lightly touches her shoulder. “The best way you can help Coco now is to fill us in on a little background. I know you don’t want to break Coco’s confidence, but you’re going to have to give us all the gory details so we know what we’re dealing with here.”

Please, Ed thinks, don’t let them be too gory.

Kacy sits up straighter and focuses on Zara. “What do you want to know?”

Zara asks Kacy how she met Coco (“On the ferry”) and what she knows about Coco’s life before Nantucket. Kacy leans in, tells Zara that Coco grew up in a small town in Arkansas. She had been working in the Virgin Islands, which was where she met the Richardsons. They had dinner at the restaurant where Coco was bartending and they invited her to follow them up here.

Zara lifts her eyes to Ed. “These people have a thing for inviting perfect strangers into their lives.”

Oh, do they, Ed thinks.

“Most of what I learned about Coco came from reading her screenplay,” Kacy says.

“Her screenplay?” Zara and Ed say together.

“It’s really good,” Kacy says. “It’s Coco’s dream to get it produced.”

Ed is impressed by how much information Zara is able to pull from Kacy without even seeming to try. She definitely has a way. Ed knows only the bare bones about Zara’s personal life: She’s forty-four years old, divorced from the minister of the Old Whaling Church in Edgartown, whom she once referred to as “the most popular man on Martha’s Vineyard, especially with his lady parishioners.” Ed had just raised his eyebrows and asked if they had children. Yes, two girls, one a freshman at Tufts, the other a sixteen-year-old, who would be transferring to Nantucket High School this fall for her junior year.

Zara’s maternal instincts are helping here, though Ed knows better than to say this.

“What about Coco’s romantic life?” Zara says.

Kacy immediately pulls back a few inches. Oh, boy, here we go, Ed thinks. What is she going to say?

“Do you have any water?” Kacy asks. “The smoke is irritating my throat.”

“There’s a cooler filled with waters in the trunk of my squad car,” Zara says. She reaches into her pocket and passes Ed the keys. “I’m sure we all could use one.”

Ed gets it—he’s the errand boy now. Though he has to admit, bringing cold waters to a house fire was something he never would have thought of. Zara Washington is good.

21. Firecracker

News of the Richardsons’ upcoming Fourth of July party aboard Hedonism sets the cobblestone telegraph ablaze. Once again the invitations are hand-delivered—square red envelopes this time—but the guest list has been trimmed by more than half. Dr. Andy hears about the party from Busy Ambrose while Busy is in for a cleaning, but when Dr. Andy checks with his wife, Rachel, he discovers they didn’t make the cut.

“You shouldn’t have taken so many videos!” Dr. Andy says.

“You shouldn’t have passed out naked in their party room!” Rachel fires back.

“Everyone was naked,” Dr. Andy says. “You were naked.”

“Should we send them flowers?” Rachel asks.

“Nobody died,” Dr. Andy says. “Why don’t we invite them for dinner?”

“I’d have to redecorate the whole house before Leslee Richardson sets foot in it,” Rachel says.

“Should we offer to take them out?” Dr. Andy asks. “I have a contact at Cru.”

“They go out every night,” Rachel says. “They can get into Cru on their own; they practically have their own stools at the back bar.”

“So—what? We just give up?”

Rachel can put a positive spin on nearly any situation, but now she feels like one of those sad freshman girls who didn’t get bids from their chosen sororities. Maybe Andy is right, she thinks. Maybe she shouldn’t have taken all those videos.

Delilah peers out her window looking for Coco in the baby-blue Land Rover. The more Delilah thinks about her behavior during the pickleball game, the more ashamed she feels. Why did she act like such a poor sport? Yes, Leslee volleyed while standing in the kitchen, but who cares? (Delilah cares; it’s not winning if you cheat.) At Phoebe’s pool afterward, Delilah tried to smooth things over but Leslee frosted her out, addressing her comments to only Phoebe and Andrea. Delilah gave up and thought, I can’t stand this woman, why am I pretending?

But even so, later, when she gets home from the Stop and Shop and sees the red envelope tucked into the corner of her screen door, she feels weak with relief.