Sidney Sheldon’s The Tides of Memory

Toni glanced out to the harbor lanes, where the Braemar Murphys’ yacht, Celeste, glittered in the afternoon sunshine.

“Oh, come on. Live a little,” Billy teased. “You know he bores you. Besides, like you said, I’m hardly likely to find a pearl in a quarter of an hour, am I?”

“But if you do?”

Slipping an arm around Toni’s waist, Billy pulled her close so their lips were almost touching. “If I do, then it’s fate. We’re meant to be together. Deal?”

Toni grinned. “Okay, deal. But it has to be at least the size of a pea.”

“A pea? Oh, c’mon now. That’s impossible!”

“A pea. Now get out of here! I’ve got some serious possum playing to do.”

BILLY SWAM OUT INTO DEEPER WATER, his shucking knife clamped between his teeth like a pirate’s cutlass. He made a couple of dives, emerging each time with a large oyster shell and making a great theatrical show of prizing it open, but with no success, clutching his heart and swooning into the water, all for Toni’s benefit.

Within a few minutes, a growing crowd of spectators had gathered to watch from the beach. The boy was an incredible swimmer and he was putting on quite a show.

Toni Gilletti thought, He’s funny, but he’s getting way too big headed. Turning away, she threw herself into the game with the boys, deliberately ignoring Billy’s antics.

CHARLES BRAEMAR MURPHY WAS FEELING GOOD. He’d enjoyed a delicious lunch of fresh Maine lobster rolls on his parents’ yacht, washed down with a couple of glasses of vintage Chablis. His old man had agreed to raise his allowance. And Toni had promised to wear the satin crotchless panties he’d bought her in bed tonight, a prospect that had had him in an almost constant state of arousal since daybreak.

Stretching out on a lounge chair on the upper deck, Charles felt his confidence returning. I have to stop obsessing about the Hamlin kid. Sure he’s after Toni. Everyone’s after Toni. But he’s no threat to me. She already had him and she tossed him aside.

Toni would be on the beach now, building sand castles with her group of little boys.

I’ll surprise her, Charles thought on a whim. Bring her some chocolate-dipped strawberries from the galley. Chicks love that sort of meaningless romantic gesture. She’ll be even more grateful in bed tonight than usual.

He clicked his fingers imperiously at one of the deckhands.

“Get one of the tenders ready. I’m going ashore.”

THE BOYS HAD TIRED OF POSSUM and were hunting for crab claws in the shallows. A collective gasp from the beach made Toni turn around.

Oh my God! Idiot!

Billy had swum out beyond the barrier that separated the swimming and harbor lanes. There were three large yachts moored offshore, and a host of smaller boats between them and the beach. A lone swimmer was as good as invisible amid such heavy traffic. Diving for pearls out there was preposterously dangerous.

Toni waved frantically at Billy, beckoning him over. “Come back!” she shouted into the wind. “You’ll get yourself killed out there!”

Billy cupped a hand to his ear in a can’t-hear-you gesture. Leaving the boys on the shore, Toni swam a few yards farther out and shouted again. “Get back here! You’ll get hit.”

Billy glanced over his shoulder. The nearest yacht tenders were at least fifty yards behind him.

“It’s fine,” he called back to Toni.

“It’s not fine! Don’t be a moron.”

“Two more dives.”

“Billy, no!”

But it was too late. With an effortless flick of the legs, Billy disappeared beneath the waves again, earning himself more gasps and claps from the beach.

Toni bit her lip, waiting anxiously for Billy to resurface. Ten seconds went by, then twenty, then thirty.

Oh, Jesus. What’s happened? Has he hit his head? I should never have taken the stupid bet and encouraged him. I know how reckless he is. He’s like me.

Then suddenly there he was, shooting up out of the blue like a dolphin at play, waving a huge oyster shell. The crowd on the beach whooped and cheered. Billy cut the thing open and pulled out a pearl, to even louder applause. But he shook his head sadly at Toni.

“It’s too small. My princess needs a pea.”

“Cut it out,” Toni shot back angrily. The game wasn’t fun anymore. Couldn’t those idiots on the beach see how dangerous this was? “Get back here, Billy. I mean it.”

Billy shook his head. “Two minutes left!” And with a deep gulp of air, he was gone again.

“WHY DON’T YOU LET ME PILOT the tender, sir. You sit back and relax.”

Daniel Gray was an experienced crewman who’d spent the last twenty years working on rich people’s yachts. The Braemar Murphys were no better or worse than most of the families Daniel Gray worked for. But their son, Charles, was an entitled little prig. He’d clearly been drinking, and should not be left alone at the wheel of an expensive piece of equipment like the Celeste’s tender.

“I’m perfectly relaxed, thanks,” Charles Braemar Murphy drawled. “Just bring me the strawberries and champagne I asked for and let my mother know I’ll be back in a couple of hours.”

“Very good, sir.”

Dickhead. I hope he runs aground and spends the next decade paying his old man back for the damage.

IT TOOK BILLY HAMLIN FORTY-FIVE SECONDS to surface this time. He still seemed to think it was a joke, barely pausing before he went back down again.

Furious, Toni turned away—no way would she spend the night with him now, however big his damn pearl, or his damn anything else, might be. As she swam back toward the boys, she saw something out of the corner of her eye. It was a rowboat, a tiny, old-fashioned wooden affair. What the hell is that doing out in the shipping lane?

No sooner had the thought occurred to her than she saw two tenders, one gliding sedately through the water, the other, a few seconds behind it, going dangerously fast, churning up a choppy wake as it roared toward the shore. The first tender saw the wooden craft and veered to avoid it, changing course fairly easily. The second seemed totally unaware of the danger.

“Boat!” Toni waved frantically at the second tender. She was in shallow water now and was able to jump up and down as she shouted and flapped her arms. “BOAT!”

CHARLES BRAEMAR MURPHY CAUGHT THE FLASH of blond hair and the familiar white bikini.

Toni was waving at him.

“Hey, babe!” He waved back, speeding up to impress her, but found he needed to clutch the wheel for support. That Chablis must have really gone to his head. “I brought you something.”

It took a few moments for Charles to realize that people on the beach were waving at him too. Hadn’t they ever seen a yacht tender before? Or maybe they’d never seen one as powerful as the Celeste’s.

By the time he saw the rowboat, and realized the danger, he was seconds away from impact. Crouched inside, two teenage boys huddled together in terror. Charles caught the look of pure panic on their faces as he hurtled toward them, and felt sick. He was close enough now to see the whites of their eyes and their desperate, pleading expressions.

Jesus Christ.

He lunged for the wheel.

THE TWO LIFEGUARDS LOOKED AT EACH other.

“Holy shit.”

“He’s gonna hit them, isn’t he?”

Grabbing their floats, they ran into the water.

TONI WATCHED IN HORROR AS THE second tender sped toward the rowboat. As it got closer, her horror intensified. Is that …Charles? What the hell is he doing?

She opened her mouth to scream, to warn him, but no sound came out. Thanks to Billy’s antics, she’d already shouted herself hoarse. That’s when she realized with chilling finality: Those kids are going to die.

DEEP BENEATH THE WAVES, BILLY HAMLIN plucked a fifth oyster shell from the sand. It was cool and peaceful down here, and quite beautiful with the sun shining its dappled rays through the water, casting ethereal, dancing shadows across the bed.

The chances of him finding a pea-size pearl were almost nil. But Billy was enjoying showing off for Toni and the crowd on the beach. He felt at home in the water, confident and strong. In the real world he might be Charles Braemar Murphy’s inferior. But not here, in the wild freedom of the ocean. Here, he was a king.

Grabbing the oyster tightly in his hand, he began to swim back up toward the light.

WRENCHING THE WHEEL TO THE RIGHT with all his strength, Charles Braemar Murphy closed his eyes. The tender banked so sharply, it almost capsized. Clinging on for dear life, Charles heard screams ringing in his ears. Was it the boys’ terror he was hearing, or his own? He couldn’t tell. Salt spray doused him, lashing his face like a razor. The tender was still moving at a terrific speed.

How had it happened so quickly, the shift from happiness to disaster? Only seconds ago he’d been deeply, profoundly happy. And now …

Heart pounding, teeth clenched, Charles Braemar Murphy braced himself for the blow.

THE CROWD ON THE BEACH WATCHED openmouthed as the tender careered uncontrollably to the right, farther into the shipping lanes.

At first the wake was so huge and the spray so high it was impossible to make out what had happened to the rowboat. But at last it emerged, bobbing wildly but still intact. Two boys could be seen standing inside, waving their arms frantically for rescue.

The relief was overwhelming. People cheered and cried and jumped up and down, hugging one another.

They made it! He missed.

Then, somewhere among them, a lone voice screamed.

“Swimmer!”

FOR TONI GILLETTI, IT ALL HAPPENED in slow motion.

She saw Charles swerve. Saw him miss the rowboat by inches. For a split second she felt relief, so powerful it made her nauseous. But then Billy Hamlin shot up out of the water like a tornado, directly in the tender’s path. Even if Charles had seen him, there was no way he could have stopped.

The last thing Toni saw was the look of shock on Billy’s handsome face. Then the tender cut off her view.

Someone on the beach screamed.

Charles cut the engine and the tender sputtered to a halt.

Billy Hamlin was gone.

CHAPTER TWO

CHARLES BRAEMAR MURPHY WAS IN SHOCK. Slumped on the bench at the back of the tender, shivering, he stared at the water. It was calm now, silvery and still like glass.

The lifeguards splashed around, searching for Billy, taking turns plunging beneath the surface.

Nothing.

On the beach, people were crying. The boys in the rowboat had made it safely to shore, tearful after their own ordeal and confused by what was going on. In the shallows, the little Camp Williams boys from Toni’s group huddled together nervously, frightened by the adults’ panic.

In a complete daze, Toni swam back to them. Someone must have called for help, because the coast-guard officers were arriving from all sides, along with tenders from the other yachts moored offshore.

“Toni?” A shivering Graydon Hammond clung to Toni’s leg.

“Not now, Graydon,” she murmured automatically, her eyes still fixed on the point in the water where she’d last seen Billy.

He can’t be dead. He was there, just seconds ago. Please, God, please don’t let him be dead, just because he was playing the fool for me.

“Toni?”

She was about to comfort Graydon when she saw it. About fifty yards farther out to sea than the point where Toni had been looking, a dazed swimmer bobbed to the surface.

“There!” she screamed at the lifeguards, waving her arms hysterically. “Over there!”

She needn’t have bothered. As one, the rescue boats converged on Billy, scooping him out of the water. Watching from his speedboat, Charles Braemar Murphy finally broke down in sobs.

It was over. The nightmare was over.

LESS THAN A MINUTE LATER BILLY was on the beach, smiling through the pain as a paramedic bandaged his head wound. Several people came over to shake his hand and inform him (as if he needed telling) how lucky he was to be alive.

“It was all for her, you know,” he told his admirers, nodding at Toni, who was striding over toward him, an Amazonian goddess in her tiny bikini, with her long wet hair trailing magnificently behind her. “My princess needed a pea. What could I do? Her wish was my command.”

Toni, however, was not in romantic mood.

“You goddamn fool!” she screamed at Billy. “You could have been killed! I thought you’d drowned.”

“Would you have missed me?” Billy pouted.

“Oh, grow up. What happened out there wasn’t funny, Billy. Poor Charles is in pieces. He thought he’d hit you. We all did.”

“ ‘Poor’ Charles?” Now it was Billy’s turn to get angry. “That dickhead was piloting his boat like a maniac. Didn’t you see how close he came to crashing into those poor kids in the rowboat?”

“They should never have been in the lanes,” said Toni. “And neither should you.”

Graydon Hammond had followed Toni out of the water and was tugging at her leg again, making whimpering noises.

“Graydon, please!” she snapped. “I’m talking to Billy.”

“But it’s important!” Graydon howled.

“Go ahead,” Billy said bitterly. “It’s clear you don’t give a damn about me. Go comfort Graydon. Or better yet, Charles. He’s the real victim here.”

“For God’s sake, Billy, of course I give a damn. Do you think I’d be so angry if I didn’t care about you? I thought … I thought I’d lost you.”

And to Toni Gilletti’s own surprise, she burst into tears.

Billy Hamlin put his arms around her. “Hey,” he whispered gently. “Don’t cry. I’m sorry I scared you. Please don’t cry.”

“Toniiiiiiiiiiiiii!” Graydon Hammond’s wails were getting louder. Reluctantly, Toni extricated herself from Billy’s embrace.

“What is it Graydon, honey?” she said more gently. “What’s the matter?”

The little boy looked up at her, his bottom lip quivering.

“It’s Nicholas.”

“Nicholas? Nicholas Handemeyer?”

Graydon nodded.

“What about him?”

Graydon Hammond burst into tears.

“He swam away. When you were watching Billy. He swam away and he never came back.”

CHAPTER THREE

IT WAS A QUARTER OF A mile back to Camp Williams from the beach, along a sandy path half overgrown with brambles. Toni’s legs were scratched raw as she ran, but she was oblivious to the pain and deaf to the plaintive cries of the children struggling to keep up.

“My God. What happened to you? Forget your clothes?”

Mary Lou Parker, pristine in her preppy uniform of khaki shorts, white-collared shirt, and docksiders, looked Toni up and down with distaste. That bikini was really too much, especially with kids around. Mary Lou couldn’t think what Charles Braemar Murphy saw in Toni Gilletti.

“Have you seen Nicholas? Nicholas Handemeyer?” Toni gasped. Belatedly Mary Louise clocked her distress and the muted sobbing of the children huddled behind her. They looked like they’d been to war. “Did he come back here?”

“No.”

Toni let out a wail.

“ I mean, I don’t know.” Mary Lou backtracked. “I haven’t seen him, but let me go ask the others.”

One by one the other counselors and Camp Williams faculty emerged from their various cabins. No one had seen Nicholas Handemeyer. But Toni shouldn’t panic.

He was bound to have gotten out of the water.

Little boys ran off sometimes.

He couldn’t be far.

A group of the boys, including Don Choate, who was a varsity swim star, set off for the beach to help the rescue efforts. Billy Hamlin and Charles Braemar Murphy had stayed to help the coast guard, while Toni took the children back to camp.

Toni stood uselessly, watching them go. Not sure what else to do, she escorted the other boys back to camp, got them changed into dry clothes, and prepared some food for them. Mary Lou Parker arrived to find Toni mindlessly chopping cucumbers and staring at the wall.

“I’ll take over here,” said Mary Lou kindly. She didn’t like Toni Gilletti, but everyone knew how fond Toni was of little Nicholas. You could see the misery in her eyes. “You go and clean up. I bet you he’ll be back by the time you’ve had a shower. He’s probably getting hungry by now.”

Walking back to her cabin, Toni tried to make herself believe what Mary Lou had said.

He’ll be back any minute.

He’s probably getting hungry.

Other thoughts, horrific thoughts, hovered ominously on the edge of her consciousness, clamoring to be let in. But Toni pushed them aside. First the kids in the rowboat. Then Billy. Now Nicholas. The afternoon had been one long roller coaster of terror and relief. But it would end happily. It had to.

When Toni saw Nicholas she would hug him and kiss him and tell him how sorry she was for allowing herself to be distracted by Billy. Tomorrow they would catch crabs together and play possum. They would build entire sand cities. Toni would not be hungover, or tired, or thinking about her love life. She would be with the children, with Nicholas, one hundred percent present.

She stopped at the door to her cabin.

The boys emerged from the beach path one by one. They walked with their heads down, in silence. Toni watched them, numb, aware of nothing but the distant lapping of the waves ringing in her ears.

In later years, she would dream about their faces:

Charles Braemar Murphy, her lover up until that day, ashen white and ghostly.

Don Choate, his lips set tight, fists clenched as he walked.

And at the rear, Billy Hamlin, his eyes swollen from crying.

Whoosh, whoosh, whoosh went the tide.

The boy’s corpse hung limp in Billy’s arms.

CHAPTER FOUR

“SO LET’S GET THIS STRAIGHT. WHEN did you first notice—first notice—that Nicholas was missing?”

Mrs. Martha Kramer cast her beady eyes from Toni Gilletti to Billy Hamlin. Both young people looked terrified. As well they might.

Martha Kramer had been running Camp Williams for twenty-two years now, first with her husband, John, and for the last nine years as a widow. Never, in all that time, had there been a single serious accident involving any of the boys in her care. Never. But now tragedy had struck. And it had struck on the watch of the carpenter’s son and the electronics millionaire’s daughter.

At only five feet tall, with perfectly coiffed gray hair and a pair of trademark pince-nez spectacles permanently suspended on a chain around her neck, Mrs. Kramer was considered a Kennebunkport institution. But her diminutive stature and soft-spoken, grandmotherly manner led many people to underestimate both her intellect and her business acumen. Camp Williams might sell itself as an old-fashioned, family-run retreat. But since her husband’s death, Mrs. Kramer had doubled the prices and started strictly vetting the boys she admitted, ensuring her reputation as the owner of the elite summer camp on the East Coast. Teenage labor was cheap, overheads were low. She’d even gotten a great deal on the carpentry for last year’s refurbishment project. Put simply, Mrs. Martha Kramer had been sitting on a cash cow. And these two irresponsible children had just slaughtered it.

“I told you, Mrs. Kramer. I had a concussion. Toni was looking after me. We thought all the kids were right there on the beach, until Graydon came over and said Nicholas was gone.”

Billy Hamlin, the boy, was doing all of the talking. The girl, Gilletti, normally a chatterbox of the worst order, was curiously mute. Perhaps it was shock? Or perhaps she was smart enough not to say anything that might incriminate her later. Something about her eyes made Mrs. Kramer uneasy. She’s thinking, the little minx. Weighing up her options.

Both Toni and Billy had gotten dressed since the beach, he in bell-bottoms and a Rolling Stones T-shirt, she in a floor-length skirt with tassels on the bottom and a turtleneck sweater that covered every inch of her skin. Again, the demure clothes were uncharacteristic of Theodore Gilletti’s wayward daughter. Martha Kramer’s eyes narrowed still further.

“And you raised the alarm right away?”

“Of course. The coast guard was already at the scene. I stayed to help them, and Toni came back here, just in case …”

Billy Hamlin let the sentence trail off. He looked at Toni, who looked at the floor.

“Miss Gilletti? Have you nothing to say?”

“If I had something to say, I’d have said it, okay?” Roused from her stupor like a sun-drunk rattlesnake, Toni suddenly lashed out. “Billy’s told you what happened. Why do you keep hammering at us?”

“Hammering at you?” Martha Kramer drew herself up to her full five feet and glowered at the spoiled teenager in front of her. “Miss Gilletti, a child is dead. Drowned. Do you understand? The police are on their way, as is the boy’s family. They are going to hammer at you until they know exactly what happened, how it happened, and who was responsible.”

“No one was responsible,” Toni said quietly. “It was an accident.”

Mrs. Kramer raised an eyebrow. “Was it? Well, let us hope the police agree with you.”

OUTSIDE MRS. KRAMER’S OFFICE, TONI FINALLY gave way to tears, collapsing into Billy’s arms.

“Tell me it’s a dream. A nightmare. Tell me I’m going to wake up!”

“Shhh.” Billy hugged her. It felt so good to hold her. There was no more “poor Charles” now. He and Toni were in this together. “It’s like you said. It was an accident.”

“But poor Nicholas!” Toni wailed. “I can’t stop thinking how frightened he must have been. How desperate for me to hear him, to save him.”

“Don’t, Toni. Don’t torture yourself.”

“I mean, he must have called out for me, mustn’t he? He must have screamed for help. Oh God, I can’t bear it! What have I done? I should never have left him alone.”

Billy pushed the image of Nicholas Handemeyer’s corpse from his mind. The little boy was floating facedown when Billy found him, in a rocky cove only yards from the shore. Billy had tried the kiss of life and the paramedics had spent twenty straight minutes on the sand doing chest compressions, trying anything to revive him. It was all useless.

Toni said, “They’ll send me to prison for sure, you know.”

“Of course they won’t,” Billy said robustly.

“They will.” Toni wrung her hands. “I already have two counts on my record.”

“You do?”

“One for fraud and one for possession,” Toni explained. “Oh my God, what if they drug-test me? They will, won’t they? I still have all that coke in my system. And grass. Oh, Billy! They’ll lock me up and throw away the key!”

“Calm down. No one’s going to lock you up. I won’t let them.”

Billy was enjoying being the strong one. It felt good having Toni Gilletti lean on him. Need him. This was the way it was supposed to be. The two of them against the world. Charles Braemar Murphy wasn’t man enough for Toni. But he, Billy Hamlin, would step up to the plate.

As he stood stroking Toni’s hair, two Maine police squad cars pulled into the graveled area in front of the Camp Williams lobby. Three men emerged, two in uniform, one in a dark suit and wing-collared shirt. Mrs. Kramer bustled out to greet them, a grim look on her wizened, old woman’s face.

Pulling Toni closer, Billy caught a waft of her scent. A surge of animal longing pulsed through him. He whispered in her ear.

“They’re going to separate us. Compare our stories. Just stick to what you told Mrs. Kramer. It was an accident. And whatever you do, don’t mention drugs.”

Toni nodded miserably. She felt as if she might throw up at any minute. Mrs. Kramer was already leading the police toward them.

“Don’t worry,” said Billy. “You’re going to be just fine. Trust me.”