Still Here

by Amy Stuart

  “Ha! So you think a reporter writes down all his secrets?”

  “Isn’t that exactly what a reporter’s supposed to do?”

  “Maybe. I’ll tell you that I couldn’t find anything on Clare O’Kearney, Private Investigator.”

  “No,” Clare says, a ringing in her ears. “You won’t find much on me.”

  “I’d say that means you’re using an alias.”

  “If I were, I’d probably have a good reason to, right? Keep a low profile, that kind of thing.”

  Austin smiles. The bartender returns with a menu. Clare scans it quickly and orders a burger. She can’t remember the last proper meal she ate, her stomach hollow with hunger. And she must eat if she’s going to keep drinking.

  “You want any food?” she asks Austin.

  “He’s too cheap to order food,” the bartender says, taking the menu. “I force him to order at least one drink.”

  “Come on,” Austin says. “You know you love my company.”

  Clare must remind herself to take small sips of the whiskey. She watches Austin over the edge of her glass, his easy banter with the bartender. His eyes are a sharp blue, his jaw patched with the attempts to grow a beard. Much of his presentation is about making himself appear older than he is. One arm rests on a leather notebook thick with earmarked pages. Clare bends to her own bag and extracts her notebook. In the days in between cases she’d thought of every way she could to formalize this work. She’d sat in a motel room with papers scattered, watching rerun detective shows into the early hours. Anything she could think of to authenticate herself into this role. She writes today’s date at the top of the page, then the name Austin Lantz, underlining it twice.

  “Can you tell me everything you know about Malcolm Hayes?” she asks. “Any secrets, as you say, that you didn’t include in your articles?”

  “The guy was a creep. I’m pretty sure he offed his wife.”

  “There’s no proof of that.”

  Her tone is measured. If she is biased, Clare must not reveal that to Austin.

  “A woman goes missing, they can’t find a single trace, and as soon as the cops lean on him, the husband vanishes? I’d say that’s as close to a confession as you’ll ever get.”

  Not necessarily, Clare thinks. She too disappeared from her life nine months ago, never reaching out to those left behind, instead allowing them to believe whatever they chose to believe. Clare knew they’d think she was dead, that her brother, Christopher, and her best friend, Grace, would assume the worst. No doubt they believed that if Jason hadn’t killed her, then she’d probably overdosed, done herself in. Clare knows better than anyone else that it’s possible to vanish, alive and well.

  “Did you ever meet Malcolm?” Clare asks.

  “I met him. I know him.”

  “What do you mean, you know him?”

  “I’ve researched his life. Take a walk down to St. James Cemetery. In one corner you’ll find Malcolm’s whole family, dead. Plane crash. He didn’t grow up here. His father was a bigwig in Newport, which is a few hundred miles up the coast. But his parents were from this area, so they’re buried here. About a hundred yards away, you’ll find the Westman plot. I’ve talked to people who knew Malcolm back in the day. They say he was stone cold after his family died. His family died in a plane crash and he just iced over. Sound like a normal guy to you?”

  “But you don’t actually know him,” Clare says.

  Austin says nothing. Clare knows she can’t fully trust the version of Malcolm offered to her by those here in Lune Bay. She has often thought of what people in her hometown might have said about her after she left, how they might have described her as bitter, cruel, detached, a drug addict married to an angry drunk. Clare drains her whiskey and orders another one. Fuck it. She needs it.

  Austin flicks her empty glass so it edges down the bar.

  “A PI with an Irish name drinking whiskey,” he says. “That’s very on brand.”

  Clare smiles tightly. “Beer’s not my thing.”

  “Was it your husband’s thing?” Austin asks.

  “Excuse me?”

  Austin lifts Clare’s left hand from where it rests on the bar and gently rubs at the base of her ring finger. “You see right here? The little dent in the skin? It’s almost faded. Almost. Your wedding ring might have gotten a bit tight over the years. Literally, I mean. My mom still had that dent two years after leaving my dad and chucking her wedding ring. It drove her nuts.”

  “That’s pretty observant,” Clare says, a heat in her cheeks.

  “That’s my job.”

  “Yeah, well. My husband’s long gone. He’s not relevant to this.”

  “Fair enough. Then why don’t you tell me who hired you to work this case?”

  “You don’t need to know that either,” Clare says.

  The bartender returns with Clare’s food and a refill on the whiskey. Clare pours a pat of ketchup next to the fries and folds one into her mouth.

  “You want to hear something funny?” Austin asks. “I was supposed to be on a blind date tonight. It was a setup. My mom says I don’t date enough. She thinks I take my work too seriously. So she and some friend from her book club matched me with this woman’s niece. Anyway, I got a text about an hour ago that my blind date wasn’t coming. She said her dog was sick, but I’m guessing she googled me and figured me to be some kind of crazed person fixated on an unsolved murder. Or maybe she peeked into the bar and didn’t like what she saw.”

  He’s fishing and Clare knows it. “That’s too bad,” she says.

  “But then your email came through about five minutes later.” Austin shrugs. “These things have a way of working out.”

  Clare says nothing. She leans over the bar to bite into her burger, a graceless task that seems to amuse Austin. Does he believe that she’s flirting with him? How is it that some men can see anything they want in nothing at all?

  “I’ll make you a deal, investigator Clare,” he says. “Question for question. A little game of get-to-know-you.”

  “Okay,” Clare says. “I go first. When did you meet Malcolm Hayes?”

  “Twice, I think. First time was right after Jack Westman’s murder. I tracked him down, tried to get him to talk to me. Second time, a few years later, maybe? Definitely before Zoe vanished. He finally agreed to an interview, then sat through the whole thing stone-faced, like he was mocking me. After Zoe went missing, I stalked him for a while. Camped out in front of their crazy cliff house. Confronted him a few times, but what’s he going to say? Then he was gone. I tried to track him, but he had every one of my sources stumped. I’ll give the guy credit: he knows how to disappear.”

  The bartender brings Austin another beer and swipes the first one from his grasp. Austin makes a show of protesting, then takes the cold bottle and clinks the top of Clare’s whiskey glass.

  “My turn,” he says. “So what’s your skin in this game?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Do you know any of the Westmans? Any of the missing women?”

  “Women?” Clare asks. “Women, plural? As far as I know, there’s only Zoe.”

  “Ohhh.” Austin drawls the word, then taps a finger to his temple. “See? Secrets. You haven’t made that connection yet. I’ve been working on this big piece. An exposé, you could say. My mom tells me the Zoe Westman case is dead, no pun intended. But did you know that in the years before Zoe Westman vanished, at least two other women went missing in this town? Possibly even more. Women who knew each other, ran in the same circle. The Westman circle. But not the kind of women who’d raise serious alarms with the police. Women they figured just took off with boyfriends. One of them had developed a pretty bad prescription drug habit. I don’t even think any of them made the front page when the missing persons reports were filed, if they made the papers at all. But I’ve been piecing things together.” He touches finger to thumb. “Connections people haven’t made before. I wrote one piece about one of the girls’ d
ads. He’s been on the hunt for his daughter, but the cops have him labeled a conspiracy theorist. No one wanted to print the story. It’s online on this niche crime blog. I’ll send you the link.”

  “That’s a big share, Austin. Thank you.”

  “Hey, I like the fact that you’re a PI,” Austin says. “But wait. We’re getting out of order here. The question is still mine. You never answered. What is your skin in the game?”

  “I was hired to come here,” Clare says, her tone unconvincing. “That’s it. I work alongside a detective named Somers. Hollis Somers. You can look her up. She’s not based in Lune Bay, obviously. We worked a case together a while back.”

  It occurs to Clare that she should tell him the truth about Malcolm too, given she’s told Charlotte. It is not her secret anymore. But something holds her back.

  “My turn,” she says. “Do you know Charlotte Westman?”

  “I know her well,” he says. “Really well these days, actually. She’s been crashing at my place. She got evicted a few weeks ago. It’s tight quarters, but we manage.”

  “Isn’t that a conflict of interest? Or a… breach of ethics or something?”

  Austin tilts his beer and shrugs. “I’m not a lawyer. She’s a source. And she’s fallen on hard times.”

  Her burger finished, Clare drains her second whiskey too fast. It burns down her throat. What time is it? Clare takes her phone from her pocket. 11:00 p.m. She is suddenly very tired.

  “My turn,” Austin says. “What’s your real name?”

  Despite the tightness in her chest, Clare angles her head and stares at Austin until he blinks.

  “Clare,” she says. “My real name is Clare.”

  “Ha. Right. Well, Clare,” Austin says. “We’ve barely scratched the surface. But I’m feeling like this has been a little uneven. Maybe another whiskey will make you more amenable to sharing?”

  “Maybe,” Clare says, finishing her drink before standing up. “But I’m meeting the detective assigned to the case tomorrow. I need to get some sleep.”

  “Germain?” Austin laughs. “Good luck. That guy couldn’t find his own ass in his pants.” He reaches for her arm, brushing it lightly. “Come on. One more drink never killed you.”

  What’s making Clare uneasy is how much she wants to capitulate, to drink with this guy who believes something is forming between them, to use her wiles to gain the upper hand. But she feels a little dizzy, and she cannot afford to lose her inhibition. Clare shakes her head with a contrite smile and collects her bag. Austin places his hand on the small of her back and directs her to the bar’s entrance. He stops just short of the door, pouting.

  “This evening turned out pretty well,” he says. “Wish it didn’t have to end so soon.”

  “I appreciate you meeting with me.”

  He leans one arm on the door, posed. Clare smiles again, embarrassed by his efforts to be coy. Austin Lantz seems like a boy working hard to play the part of a man. Still, she knows there’s a mild slur to her words and he’s interpreting that as an invitation.

  Outside, the cold air is a shock to Clare, a misting rain coating her. She hadn’t realized how sweaty she’d gotten inside. She walks to the nearest corner to gather her bearings. Her breaths are quick, short. She knows this feeling too well, the exhilaration of the whiskey, the desire for one more. She must keep walking.

  WEDNESDAY

  The restaurant is a shabby BBQ spot. It’s busy inside, but the older hostess breaks into a big grin and offers Detective Patrick Germain a warm hug. She looks to Clare with the curiosity of a nosy aunt. Germain shakes his head to stave off her implied question.

  “Work meeting,” he says.

  When Patrick Germain smiles, he looks almost bashful, his strong and squared jaw still somehow boyish. He is taller than Clare by only an inch, and though he’s made detective, he can’t yet be thirty. The hostess laughs, then leads them to a small booth at the back, empty, as if she’d been waiting for Germain to arrive. They sit and Germain hands Clare a menu.

  “The ribs are the best in five hundred miles.”

  “It’s not even nine in the morning,” Clare says.

  “Never too early for ribs. This place is open twenty-four/seven. You a carnivore?”

  “I guess so,” Clare says.

  Germain sets the menu flat on the table to study it. Clare spots a small tattoo on the inside of his wrist, a sideways eight. The infinity symbol. The waitress comes over and Germain orders for both of them. Ribs, coleslaw, water.

  “So.” Germain opens a notepad. He copies her name from the card she’s given him. “Clare O’Kearney. What’s your date of birth?”

  “Why do you need my date of birth?” Clare asks. “We’re just talking.”

  “It’s standard procedure.”

  “With a witness maybe,” Clare says. “Or a suspect.”

  “Okay.” Germain clicks at the tip of his pen. “But not with”—he studies the card again—“not with an investigator?”

  “Listen,” Clare says. “I appreciate you meeting with me. I know you haven’t had the best of luck with this case.”

  Germain leans back in the booth and lets out a long sigh. Clare has come to understand that the greatest puzzle in this work is deciphering what to share with whom. She knows better than to trust just anyone. In their phone call yesterday, she’d told Germain the basic facts of her relationship with Malcolm. Still, her guard will stay squarely up. Germain raps his fingers against the grainy wood of the table.

  “The way I see it,” Germain says, “this case was given to me as a hazing ritual. A murder five years cold, a missing woman gone eighteen months with zero leads or clues. Two cases that shouldn’t even be on the same file but are. And the woman’s husband, the prime suspect, gone too. Malcolm Hayes’s trail has been as cold as ice, until you show up and say you’ve been playing PI with him for the past few months.”

  “I’m trying to be honest with you from the get-go.”

  Germain eyes her. “I appreciate that. Because, let me tell you, it feels like the witnesses change their story every time you sit them down. And the early police files are… thin.”

  “Thin as in you don’t think your fellow officers were doing their jobs?”

  “I make a point to never speak ill of my colleagues. But one guy who worked the case was an old boyfriend of Zoe’s. He knew Malcolm too, for chrissake. That kind of stuff is bound to happen in a small place like Lune Bay, but this one had conflict of interest written all over it. Lots of rumors that that particular cop was dirty too. There were other lead detectives too. Let’s just say a few old-timers were offered very convenient retirement packages around the time the case started to go cold.”

  Clare nods. In her hometown these sorts of rumors plagued the local department, the notion that certain cases could get pushed aside if the suspect had the right connections. Even Clare had been a beneficiary, avoiding formal arrest on drug charges because her father was friends with the officer’s brother. She sips at her water. Germain seems almost at odds with himself, a day’s growth on his beard, the tattoo, nails bitten to the quick, but then a pressed shirt and a tie. He seems more a miscast actor playing the part of detective than the young phenom Lune Bay’s public relations team declares him to be.

  “So,” Germain says. “You call me out of the blue and tell me that Malcolm is your employer—I guess that’s what you’d call him, right? And you’ve seen him as recently as last week, which means he’s alive, unless he drove off a cliff in the meantime. And you’re a private investigator working alongside a police officer from wherever. That’s a mouthful.”

  Clare smiles. Germain is studying her closely. Before leaving the hotel this morning, Clare had taken advantage of the well-stocked bathroom, the fruity shampoos and fancy hair dryer. She’d taken time she never takes anymore, putting effort into the curl of her hair, applying mascara and lip gloss she’d picked up in a drugstore along the way. Selecting jeans and a black sweater. Those l
ooks of yours are currency, Clare’s mother used to say. Spend wisely.

  “I said I worked for him, yes,” Clare answers. “Now I’m looking for him, yes. And that police officer from wherever? She’s a detective. Just like you.”

  “And you really saw him a week ago?”

  “Roughly a week ago. Yes.”

  “He’s wanted in connection with the disappearance of his wife. You’re aware there’s been a warrant for his arrest in place for a long time?”

  “I’m aware now,” Clare says. “I wasn’t a week ago.”

  “And your detective friend wasn’t aware either?”

  “By the time she was, he was gone,” Clare says.

  Clare clears her throat and again takes Germain through an abridged version of her history with Malcolm. His hiring her, the cases, the relationship with Detective Somers that Clare formed on the last case. The story flies from her like a rock skimming over deep water, all the details about her escape from her marriage nine months ago, about her husband, Jason, and her own demons, left under the surface.

  “Why does Detective Somers want you here?”

  Clare shrugs. “I guess she doesn’t like unsolved cases.”

  “Hm. Okay.”

  Before Germain can continue, the waitress arrives and sets an oval platter of ribs and coleslaw between them. She returns seconds later with napkins and wipes, plates and forks, then the cutlery, everything dropped in front of them unceremoniously. Germain busies himself arranging the food for them, his face locked in a concentrated frown. Clare attempts to nibble a rib without streaking her face with sauce.

  “I called you,” Clare says, “because my guess is that you haven’t had a real lead in a long time. I figured maybe we could help each other.”

  “I’d consider you a lead.” Germain bites at a rib. “I mean, hey. A stranger shows up with a glossy PI business card and tells me she was in touch with one of my suspects as recently as a week ago? A suspect who disappeared deep into the ether? A guy with big ties to the Westman family? That’s a monster lead, if you ask me.”