Jane grit her teeth and pounded her fist against her steering wheel. She had overslept, right through her alarm, and now she was stuck in the worst part of the morning rush hour. Normally she would already be at her desk and enjoying her second cup of joe. She stabbed her finger at the preset buttons of her radio trying to catch a traffic report; if there was an accident or a disabled vehicle ahead, she could turn off and try a different route. All that came through was the usual crappy pop music and cocky morning DJ assholes, those jerks who thought it was funny to make prank calls to people with limited English skills. She punched the radio off with a groan and rubbed at her sore eyes. When she'd finally fallen asleep in the early hours of the morning, she'd had one of those bizarre dreams that left her feeling that she was reaching for something just a millimeter beyond her grasp and that if she only stretched a bit more she would have it.
She was floating across an indoor pool in a miniature replica of the Mayflower. She kept trying to look behind her to where children were splashing and laughing, but a mist rising from the chlorinated water obscured her view. She was straining to hear a man's voice instructing her on how to plug the leak that had sprung in the vessel's bottom, but was distracted by a very naked Maura swimming laps around her boat. "Come in, Jane, the water's fine." She said.
She didn't need a Ph.D. in psychology to understand the second part of the dream, but what was the connection to the goddamn Mayflower? Now she was even dreaming of the freakin' boat, and what of Deniece Smoot, a working-class black woman being a GSMD member? She resolved to see this line of inquiry through. She'd grab Frost and drive to Plymouth this morning. If there was something hiding beneath that famous rock, Jane Rizzoli would damn well find it. She nodded to herself, a bit of her good humor returning and pulled into an illegal spot in front of headquarters.
Jane sank into her chair, coffee in hand, ready to defend her plan to drive all the way out to Plymouth to follow up on what she had begun to think of as "Mayflower Madness" and "Pilgrim Paranoia."
"That's fine, Janie." Korsak replied indifferently, busy licking french cream from his fingers.
"M'kay." Said Frost, very intent on unwrapping something gooey and delicious smelling in a bright pink box on his desk.
"Whatcha got there, Frost?"
Jane stood and leaned over the divide between their desks.
"A perfect beignet filled with french cream and dusted with angels' kisses."
He lifted the cruller skyward in appreciation.
"I bought a half dozen of these puppies for my mom when she was in town and it set me back forty-two bucks."
"Worth every penny." Korsak replied, rooting around his empty pink box in search of a stray bit of cream.
"Doc brought them for us. There's a box on your desk too, under that folder."
Jane tugged at the black velvet ribbon securing her pink box. Growling in frustration she pulled a box cutter from her drawer and the perfectly constructed bow collapsed into a pile on her blotter.
"What the fuck!"
She reached her hand into the box and withdrew a small, plain bran muffin. "No way. You guys get those big, creamy, delicious donuts and I get a freakin' bran muffin? "
She dumped the offending box into the garbage, crossed her arms and scowled. After a moment she reached into the can and extracted the box.
Korsak smiled. "I don't blame you, Janie. A bran muffin from Marie Claudette's is bound to be better than most desserts anyplace else."
"Finish up your bidet, Frosty-boy, I want to hit Plymouth and be back by lunch time."
Jane took a huge swig from her coffee mug.
"You're on your own, Jane. Korsak and I have a few appointments at BCU this morning."
"Going to talk to the Bursar and swim coach and maybe some of the Smoot kid's buddies on the team. Why don't you take the Doc? Those are her people, probably make it easier on you."
Korsak gave up on finding crumbs and sadly dropped his box into the trash. Jane punched the extension for the morgue into her phone, not at all surprised that it was answered on the first ring.
"Dr. Isles."
"Maur, you busy today?"
"I don't have any autopsies, but I had planned to spend the morning analyzing the blood spatter patterns from the Rigsdale house, maybe get a fix on the height of your killer."
"Oh." Jane poked at her bran muffin. "I just thought you might like to take a ride with me to Plymouth. You're the one who's so obsessed with the damn Mayflower after all."
"Give me 15 minutes. Susie can do the preliminary spatter tests. I'll get a few things together and we can have a lovely picnic lunch in Pilgrim Memorial State Park."
Maura's voice practically buzzed with happiness across the phone line.
"Speaking of food..." Jane asked. "Why did everyone get a nice doughnut for breakfast and I got a boring old bran muffin?"
"Well, you did complain of bathroom difficulties last night. You seemed to be out of breath from the effort to evacuate your bowels. Adding fiber to one's diet is the easiest and most natural cure for constipation. As a matter of fact, Asian Indians produce nearly three times the amount of fecal matter that Americans do, yet they eat considerably less."
"Maura! Stop it! Eww!" After a pause she added, sotto voce. "That wasn't even what I was doing."
The M.E. was silent on the other end of the line, her brows drawn together in deep thought, then her face brightened. "Jane, were you pleasuring yourself?"
Jane groaned.
"Masturbation is an excellent outlet for anxiety. It fights off depression, heightens self-esteem, boots the immune system, lowers blood pressure, normalizes hormone production in the body. Every doctor should prescribe a healthy dose of it. As a matter of fact, Jocelyn Elders, the Surgeon General during the Clinton administration, did just that. She had to step down due to the controversy, but nonetheless, she was a strong advocate for the practice."
Jane's voice was a high-pitched rasp in her ear. "Mauuuura, I am going to hang up now. If you bring it up again, I swear I will drown you in Plymouth Harbor."
Maura made a mental note to add the image of a masturbating Jane Rizzoli to her own autoerotic fantasies. She bit her lower lip and trembled at the thought.
The Mayflower House Museum was a sprawling white colonial with black shutters set on a manicured swath of green lawn and perfectly trimmed hedgerows.
"What an ugly building." Jane stopped outside of the gates and looked at the gleaming white edifice.
Maura stopped beside her and raised a hand to shield her eyes from the mid-morning sun.
"It was probably once a lovely home, beautiful in its simplicity, but you're right, Jane, the constant additions over the centuries have thrown off the classical proportions of the building and rendered it inelegant. It has everything: porches, columns, a widow's walk and even a cupola. It's just too much."
She slipped her arm through Jane's and leaned in, warming to her subject. "Our perception of beauty is directly linked to proportion, whether in art, architecture or the human form and visage. We are coded to prefer that which is balanced and symmetrical."
Jane stiffened briefly at the physical contact, but did not pull away. "I thought beauty was in the eye of the beholder."
Maura nodded "Individual preferences are indeed subjective; one may prefer blonde hair to dark or a lean form to one more generous, but all humans, even babies, will prefer both faces and bodies with a greater measure of symmetry in features and limbs. Likewise, we prefer buildings that are symmetric in their layout and adhere to classic ratios of proportion."
"Is there anything you don't know?" Jane smiled and squeezed the doctor's hand before withdrawing and covering the last few yards to the door in a relaxed lope.
"Yes." Maura replied earnestly. "Lots."
They were directed to a smaller building directly behind the main house, which housed the Mayflower Library and office of the Historian General.
Jane was expecting a skinny little Poindexter with giant glasses, hearing aids and a self-conscious stutter. The Historian General was, however, a tall, handsome black man in his early thirties, dressed casually in a pair of dockers and a pale pink oxford shirt. He greeted them with a warm smile and saw them into a sitting room out of the public' s view.
"I'm Bradley Brewster, the head geek around here." He extended his hand and Maura immediately took it, meeting his smile with one of her own.
"Maura Isles, MD."
"Isles... hmm. We have a Dr. Isles on our board. Any relation to Constance?"
"I'm her daughter."
"Ah! A pleasure, indeed." Jane pulled her shield and cred pack and held it up before taking a seat next to Maura on a maroon settee.
Brewster glanced at it briefly as he sat on a wing chair opposite the pair. To his credit, he showed no reaction to Jane's still bruised and swollen jaw.
"I'm happy to assist in any way I can."
Jane sat in an uncomfortable silence, unsure where to begin and what to ask. Maura lay a gentle hand on her knee, a sign of support.
"I'm sorry Dr. Brewster. I'm not sure what I want to know and frankly I am surprised by your race."
"Jane!" Maura looked askance in horror, but Bradley Brewster just laughed.
"We have hundreds of members of mixed European and African ancestry, but I understand the perception of our society is very different than the reality."
Maura asked. "We are interested in one particular member, Deniece Fuller Smoot."
"I don't even have to consult my database on that one." Brewster replied. "Her son, Prescott was the winner of the Society's scholarship last year; we are paying half his tuition at BCU. Her younger son was accepted there this year, but unfortunately we have a policy of one scholarship per family. Ms. Smoot vowed to find the tuition money somewhere and last I heard, the younger son was planning to matriculate this fall."
He smiled and sat back in his chair.
"She's dead. So are her boys, Dr. Brewster. I'm grasping at straws here, but do you think her membership here pissed off anyone enough to kill? Could someone have been jealous of the scholarship? Tuition at BCU is a small fortune." Jane met his amber eyes with her own darker brown.
"No, no, I can't imagine that." The historian looked to be in shock. They sat together in quiet for a few more minutes, all absorbed in their own sorrow.
Jane was the first to stand. She reached her hand toward the still seated man.
"Thank you for your time, Dr. Brewster. May I call you if I have any further questions?"
"Yes. Yes, of course." He rose and shook Jane's hand and then turned to Maura. "It was a pleasure meeting you and your wife, Dr. Isles. Please remember me to your mother."
Jane rolled her eyes.
Wife, really?
If someone had said this last month they would have laughed about it and maybe played it up for their own amusement. Now it stung and embarrassed Jane. She set her jaw and headed for the closed door. They were out of the sitting room when Jane turned, deciding on a whim to ask about her other murder.
"Dr. Brewster, do you know a family named Rigsdale?"
"Yes, of course. There were Rigsdales on the Mayflower, but there are no descendants of that family."
"Right." Jane turned once again to leave.
"Funny thing, though." Brewster began speaking and then seemed to think better of it. "Maybe I shouldn't repeat this. It would be unkind."
"Please, Dr. Brewster, something you think is trivial may give us a break."
The historian grimaced. "There is this very unpleasant woman who has been trying to get into the Society for years. My predecessor told me about her and I myself have had the misfortune of making her acquaintance twice. She insists that there is sufficient proof in the archives that both she and her late husband are Mayflower descendants. She has even tried to buy her way in. She is completely obsessed."
"And her name?" Jane asked.
"Rigsdale. Prudence Rigsdale."
Jane walked briskly back to her Crown Vic. Maura had to half-jog on her shorter legs and higher heels to keep up. The detective slipped in behind the wheel and started the engine before the other woman had even closed the door.
"Jane, aren't we going to have our picnic lunch in the park?" Maura asked clicking her shoulder belt into place.
"Oh, Maur..." Jane groaned. "Can't we just eat the sandwiches in the car? It's a 40-mile ride back to Boston. I don't want to hit school traffic."
"Sure. I understand." The doctor answered in a quiet voice looking down at her hands folded neatly in her lap.
Jane groaned again. "Okay, 30 minutes in the park. Not a second longer."
The M.E.'s face brightened immediately. "Not a second, Jane. I promise. This will be much better since the meal I packed is not conducive to vehicular dining."
"What are we having, snail paté and truffled escargot?" Jane popped the trunk and grabbed the shiny metal cooler the doctor had stowed there.
Maura frowned. "Snails are escargot."
"Whatever, Maur." The detective had already slammed the trunk and was marching toward the sea. Maura didn't rush to keep up this time. She kept back and admired the view. Jane had a definite swagger, but the weight of the cooler in her right hand pulled her entire body in one direction and she overcompensated with a feminine roll of her slim hips in the other. The doctor licked her lips.
"No picnic tables. We will have to sit on the grass."
"Oh, Jane. I packed a body tarp. I'll just run back to the car and grab it."
"No time. Just... here. This is due for a trip to the dry cleaner anyway."
Jane pulled off her suit jacket and placed it on the ground in the shade of a large oak. Stepping out of her pumps, the doctor gracefully lowered herself onto the dark garment folding her bare legs beneath her.
Jane dropped to the grass opposite her and reached for the cooler. "What the fuck, Maur? Is this the body-part transport cooler?"
"Office of the Medical Examiner" and the "Seal of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts" were stamped on both sides of the gleaming metal chest.
"I'm not eating lunch from your decomp slop bucket." Jane's upper lip curled with disgust.
"Jane, it is perfectly sanitary. I always use a liner and disinfect after each use. It is constructed from surgical steel inside and out. I assure you that there are less icky things in that container than you would find in your average McWhopper sandwich."
The detective sighed deeply, but flipped open the cooler and began removing plastic containers. Fresh cut fruit, a large Greek salad, a plate of mozzarella and beefsteak tomatoes, a wedge of brie, a box of whole-grain crackers and two-liter bottles of Pellegrino water all emerged from the polished steel depths of the box.
"Where on earth did you get all this food in 15 minutes? Or are you always ready for a five-course picnic in the park?"
Maura giggled, tilting her head back to catch a warm ray of sun on her cheek. She was happy. This really could be enough for her, had been enough for years. She didn't need Jane to be her lover; she wanted it, yes, but could content herself with the intimate friendship she shared with the other woman. She knew she was Jane's only emotional partner as Jane was hers. As long as they could sit together in the park and mock flirt over lunch, share long hugs and the occasional platonic sleepover, she could bear it. As long as Jane didn't date, didn't fall in love. Casey had scared her, scared her out of the closet, in fact.
Jane watched her friend smiling in the sunshine, her face tilted up so that the copper in her hair blazed like flame and her alabaster skin seemed to glow as if lit from within. A stray beam caught the chain around her neck and light reflected from the dip in her collarbone and from her silvery watchband; for a moment Jane allowed herself to imagine kissing the doctor's soft neck and the delicate ivory skin on the inside of her wrist.
She is the most beautiful woman I have ever seen. She thought, but what she said was, "Earth to Maura. Are we eating or daydreaming?"
Maura turned back to Jane with a smile. Her eyes in this light were the exact color of Plymouth Harbor, sea-glass green, and Jane had to turn away from their gaze. She toyed with the lid of the salad container and then with her iphone.
"Jane, a pen for your thoughts."
Now she was the one daydreaming.
"A penny, Maur. It's a penny for your thoughts."
Maura furrowed her brow. "That is completely nonsensical. Your thoughts are worth much more than a penny to me."
Jane smiled; the awkwardness of the previous moment was broken. "And how does a pen make more sense?"
"To write them down, of course."
Jane laughed and unable to resist, reached out and pushed a wisp of dark blond hair out of her friend's face.
"Really, where did you get this food?"
"Mostly from your mother and a few things I had lying around the morgue."
"Tell me what came from the morgue, so I won't eat it."
"Just the brie and the water, both perfectly sanitary I assure you."
Jane shifted her weight on the grass. The butt of her gun was digging into her ribs.
"Did my mother grill you?"
"About what?" Maura looked genuinely confused.
"You know... the gay thing."
"Oh. Not really. She wanted to know if I was seeing someone. I said no. She asked if I told my mother. I said yes and what my mother said and then we talked about you."
Maura popped a kalamata olive into her mouth. Their piquant flavor always reminded her of Jane: her Mediterranean heritage and the sharp and biting wit that marked her very essence. Maybe Jane would taste like an olive, slick and briny.
Jane interrupted her thoughts. "What about me?"
"Oh. Nothing really. She thinks you're avoiding her."
"I am."
"Because you don't want to talk to her about me or..."
That too. Jane thought. "No, Maura. I don't want her to see my face."
"It's healing very nicely. If you can avoid her another ten days, you should be good as new."
Jane snorted. "There are three things you can't avoid: death, taxes and Angela Rizzoli."
"Uh, Maur, What did your mother say?"
"She said she always knew. That a mother always knows."
Jane looked over the green expanse of water to where a group of school children were boarding the replica of the famous ship. She watched them in silence for a few minutes and then jumped up.
"C'mon. Half hour is definitely up. Back to work, Dr. Isles."