The High Tide Club

“And the only way to get to the island is by boat? Is there, like, a ferry?”

“There’s a small state-operated ferry that goes to the park on the north end, but Josephine keeps a boat at the dock on her end of the island, and that’s how we’ll get over there today,” Brooke said. “It’s only about a half-hour ride.”

Lizzie glanced down at the cat stretched across her lap and frowned. “Dweez doesn’t really like water. Or boats.”

“Maybe you can leave her in your room at the hotel,” Marie suggested.

“No way,” Lizzie said flatly. “She goes where I go. But it’s not that big a problem. I brought some chill pills. She can have some of mine.”

Marie smiled weakly. “Lizzie, tell me about your grandmother Ruth. I think it’s so interesting that she and Josephine and my mother were best friends.”

Lizzie yawned. “Grandma was definitely a pistol. She dyed her hair flame red right up until her hairdresser died, and then I did it for her. She had great legs, and she loved to show them off every chance she got. And she was a real original thinker. My dad always said I was more like Grandma than him or my mom, which was true. Grandma was the one who turned me on to books and writing. My dad said Grandma was living her life through me. She never worked after she married my granddad, because, let’s face it, he was rich as sin, and women in her circle didn’t really have careers back then. If she’d been born in my mother’s generation, she probably would have been in Congress or maybe even president. Instead, she marched and protested and raised funds and raised hell for the liberal causes she cared about.”

“Brooke tells me Ruth was your paternal grandmother?” Marie asked.

Lizzie shrugged. “She pretty much raised me, off and on. My mom split when I was just a kid, and my dad, well, he wasn’t really what you’d call dad material. They weren’t even technically married, it turns out. Grandma said my dad was super smart in school, but then he got drafted and went to Vietnam, and he was pretty messed up when he got back. He drifts around, always has some crazy scheme he’s working on. Grandma left him some money in her will, so I guess that’s what he lives on.”

Brooke glanced at her guest in the rearview mirror. “It’s none of my business, but when I contacted you, the first thing you told me was that you’re broke. I guess I’m wondering why your grandmother didn’t leave you any money.”

“The broke part was just in case you were a scammer. Anyway, I didn’t say she didn’t leave me any money,” Lizzie said, her smile tight. “Grandma didn’t want me to end up like my dad—you know, just a stoner. Most of Grandpa’s fortune she left to the American Civil Liberties Union, Planned Parenthood, and Greenpeace, which she told me she intended to do, so no surprise there.”

Marie turned around in her seat to face Lizzie. “Didn’t you resent that?”

“Not really. It was something she talked about a lot. She paid for me to go to a good college, said she was investing in me having a career so that I could make my own way without having to depend on some man to support me. She left me enough to buy a house—which, if you know anything about California real estate prices, was a pretty good chunk of change. I started out working at newspapers, but that’s no longer sustainable. So I freelance, and I do okay.”

“Why wasn’t newspaper reporting ‘sustainable’?” Marie asked.

“It was for a few years, right up until they fired me,” Lizzie said. “I might’ve survived the downsizing, but they wouldn’t accept Dweezil as my emotional support animal.”

“You mean you took your cat to work with you?” Brooke asked. She was beginning to wonder if maybe Lizzie had inherited some of her father’s instability.

“Of course,” Lizzie said. “But one day she ate my editor’s desk plant and coughed it up on the linoleum floor of the break room. The publisher stepped on it, slid to the floor, and broke a hip. So they banished Dweez from the newsroom, which was entirely their loss, I assure you. Without her, my anxiety level soared. So when cuts were made, I was one of the first to go.”

Brooke wasn’t sure she wanted to hear how Lizzie’s anxieties manifested themselves, so she decided to change the subject. “Your grandma sounds like somebody I would have loved to have known,” Brooke said. “I guess it makes sense that she and Josephine were such good friends.”

Now it was Lizzie’s turn to ask the questions. “What was Millie like, Marie?”

“Mama was pure sweetness. Quietly religious, in her own way. She played the piano beautifully, and she was devoted to her home and her family. I know she and Josephine were in nursery school together, and later they met Ruth in boarding school, and they all went to the same college together, but I think she dropped out after her sophomore year. Her family had financial issues, the war had started, and she got married not long after that.”

“I wish Granny had lived long enough for me to have really known her,” Brooke said. “I just have these tiny fragments of memories—like, I remember her perfume. It smelled sort of like lilies. And I remember her hands. She had long, slender fingers, and I’d sit on her lap and she’d let me play with her rings.”

“By the time you came along, she’d already started to show signs of early dementia,” Marie said sadly. “She’d get frustrated and was so easily agitated. Holding you seemed to calm her down.”

“It’s funny to think about Granny and Ruth and Josephine being best friends,” Brooke mused. “From what I can tell, listening to you two, they all had such different personalities.”

“I have a couple of old pictures of the three of them together that I found in one of my grandmother’s photo albums,” Lizzie said.

Marie’s face lit up. “You do? Oh, I’d love to see those.”

“Me too,” Brooke said.

“They’re in my suitcase,” Lizzie said. “I made copies for you.”

“That’s so thoughtful,” Marie said. “I don’t have many family photos at all. Mama was never much of a saver,” she said wistfully. “I think she didn’t see the point of it.”

“Grandma was the opposite,” Lizzie said. “She saved everything. Newspapers, old letters, play programs, diaries. And scrapbooks! I have an entire trunkful of her scrapbooks. I’ve always thought someday I’d get a book out of that stuff. Maybe even more than one.”

“What kind of a book?” Brooke asked, intrigued.

“Well, there’s that unsolved murder on the island, of course,” Lizzie said.

Brooke stared at her passenger in the rearview mirror. “You don’t mean Talisa.”

“Of course I do,” Lizzie said. “Hasn’t Josephine mentioned Russell Strickland to you?”

“Noooo,” Brooke said. She looked over at her mother. “Does that name mean anything to you?”

“Never heard it before,” Marie said.

Lizzie sucked loudly on her mojito. “It was a huge mystery at the time. Let’s see … 1941? Think that’s right. I say it’s a murder, but actually, nobody really knows what happened to the guy. One minute he was there, at a big fancy party at Shellhaven, and the next morning, he was gone. Poof! Never seen or heard from again.”