by A. J. Banner
I put the picture back into my pocket and pull out onto the road. But instead of returning to my cottage, I head out of town, along the winding, forested drive to Nathan’s house on Cedarwood Lane. I park in the driveway and hurry over to the Eklunds’ front door, ring the bell. The melodic tones echo through the rooms. No answer. The silver Honda sits innocently in the driveway. I ring again. Still no response, so I head over to Arthur Nguyen’s place. When I ring the bell, he comes out on the porch, Bert in his arms, tail wagging. The scent of pipe tobacco wafts out. Arthur’s wearing the hat, thick reading glasses perched on his nose. I pet Bert’s head. “Marissa,” Arthur says. “Want to go fishing? Pond is stocked.”
“Um, thank you, no. I wanted to ask you about what you said before. I didn’t get a chance to talk to you. We were worried about Anna.”
“She was in the tree house, wasn’t she?” he says, looking toward Nathan’s place.
“You were right. Thank you.”
“My kids loved it up there, especially my oldest daughter. She’s going to Berkeley this year. On scholarship.”
“You must be so proud of her.”
“Oh, she was always the studious one. Stayed up till all hours to get those As.”
“Speaking of staying up till all hours. You said you saw someone outside Friday night, with Lauren?”
“What I saw was a shadow. I thought I heard voices, but I didn’t pay much attention. I realized in the morning, when the detective came over, that maybe I saw a murderer and didn’t even know it. Or maybe it was nothing. Who’s to say?”
“I heard Bert barking. Was he barking at the shadows?”
“I don’t know, but he got pretty riled up.”
Bert wriggles from his arms and jumps down, tail wagging. He trots over to lick my hand. “Good dog, Bert,” I say. “Alerting the neighborhood to danger.”
“That’s my boy,” Arthur says.
“Bert doesn’t usually bark at people he knows. Does he?”
“He’ll bark if he senses trouble,” Arthur says thoughtfully. “He also barks at squirrels and rabbits. He’s a dog. But you’re right. When it comes to people, he alerts me to trespassers or strangers.”
“So, either a stranger was wandering around, or he got overexcited about the wildlife. Other than his barking, did you hear anything else? Maybe an argument?”
“I couldn’t tell. I wasn’t paying a whole lot of attention. Bert needed a potty break and I needed to go back to sleep. I wish I could be of more help.”
“You’ve been a great help. Thank you.”
“No problem, anything I can do.”
On my way to my car, I head up the Eklunds’ driveway and into their backyard. I know I’m trespassing yet again, but nobody seems to be home. I’m drawn past the gazebo to the crime scene tape, which extends like a twenty-foot party streamer between two tall fir trees. I hunch against the wind, following the boundary line, scanning the ground. Dirt, grass, a flat area leading to a tangle of bushes clinging to the cliff edge. A thicket of rose hips. There, scuffed bootprints in the soil. Lauren’s? Or someone else’s? On either side of the scuffed prints, spindly rhododendrons grow to a height of eight or nine feet. If not for the sheltering branches of a fir tree, the rain would have washed away the prints by now.
Something looks wrong. I peer closely at the rhododendrons. A few branches are broken, snapped off at chest height. The police must have seen this. It’s as if someone grabbed the branches to keep from falling.
I step back, my breathing fast. Lauren struggled, grasped those branches. I rush across the yard, hurtle down the stairs to the beach. Retrace my steps to the place where I found her. Or close. I can’t be sure of the exact spot. There’s no tape here, no markers, no sign. The tide rose and scoured the beach, then receded, leaving behind new shells and pebbles. Here, just past this promontory. This is where I saw her. I look up toward the bluff. Impossible to tell what happened at the top. Madrone and tree roots protrude where the soft ground is steadily eroding from the cliff face. Boulders have tumbled down, rubble piled at the bottom.
What happened to you, Lauren? I kneel and run my fingers through the sand. No sign that she was ever here. I walk the waterline, scanning the shore. On this deserted stretch of beach, wild things wash up—cockleshells, the occasional seabird, an overturned crab. Silvery-purple oyster shells in clumps. I glimpse a feathery reddish creature fluttering in the shallows, at the edge of a barnacled rock. Occasionally, a clear jellyfish flops onto the sand, but never one so colorful. As I approach the flash of red, a glint of something shiny catches my eye. Something man-made. Glass or metal. I crouch for a closer look. The red material is a swath of delicate, waterlogged fabric—a neck scarf, perhaps. A metal button shines at one end, imprinted with an intricate leaf pattern.
I look around, but all along the beach only kelp, broken seashells, and driftwood are scattered across the sand. How did the scarf get here? Could it be Lauren’s? Could she have lost it on the way down? But she never wore scarves. She didn’t like the feel of fabric around her neck. Could she have pulled the scarf off someone else? Or has someone been here on the beach since yesterday morning? I pull out my cell phone and call the detective.
“Have you touched the scarf?” he says.
“No, but it’s in the water. Snagged on a rock,” I say.
“I’ll be right there. Any chance it could float away?”
“The tide is coming in.”
“Keep an eye on it.” He hangs up.
Keep an eye on it? Until the water laps up past my legs and I’m swimming? Until the waves crash into the cliff? The tide does rise that far now and then. The scarf whips back and forth in the water as if it’s alive.
Ten minutes later, when the detective hurries down the steps in his long black coat, I feel I’ve been waiting for days. He retrieves the scarf with gloved hands, drops the soggy fabric into an evidence bag. “Did you find anything else?”
I squint up at the bluff. “I walked over to the yellow tape. I didn’t cross the line, but I saw the broken branches at chest level, near the bootprints. I’m guessing you logged all that as evidence.”
“We don’t miss much,” he says, heading back to the steps. “Neither do you. Want to come work for us?”
I hurry after him, bracing against the wind. “She was holding on, wasn’t she? Trying to. Before she fell over the edge.”
“We’re trying to figure out what happened,” he says, turning his head to look back at me. He ascends the stairs two at a time.
I race to keep up with him. “That’s your standard line,” I say. “You know the scarf is evidence, or you wouldn’t have come all the way down here.”
“Did I say that?” He strides on a diagonal path across the lawn, like he can’t wait to shake me off.
“I saw the look on your face.” I follow him to his black sedan, parked at the curb.
“What look was that?”
“Grim concentration. Like this is important.”
“Everything’s important,” he says.
“She didn’t wear scarves, you know.”
“Who didn’t?” He clicks a button on his key chain. The headlights flash on the sedan, the doors clicking.
“Lauren. She never wore scarves or necklaces or turtlenecks. She said it felt like she was being strangled. The scarf can’t be hers.”
“Good to know.”
“Then where did it come from? Could she have pulled it off someone? Whoever pushed her?”
“Anything is possible,” he says, getting into the car.
“If the scarf washed in from far away, it would be frayed or faded. What are the odds?”
He looks at me, a quizzical expression in his eyes. “You tell me. You seem to have it all figured out.”
“Can you test the scarf for DNA?”
“Difficult to extract DNA if the evidence is submerged in salt water for very long. If that scarf passed through a few owners—”
“There would be lots
of different DNA on the fabric.”
His brows rise, and he shrugs. “Maybe.”
“You won’t tell me what you’re thinking, so what can I do except speculate? She was my friend. She falls off a cliff, grabbing at branches, and now here is a scarf. I think it was here the whole time, but you missed it.”
“That’s entirely possible,” he says. “Have a good day, Miss Parlette. Try to get some rest.” As I watch him drive away, I want to run after him and pound on the window, demand answers.
“Marissa?” a small voice says behind me. I turn to see Brynn emerging from the wooded path to the gazebo. “Who was that?”
CHAPTER TWENTY
I tell Brynn about the scarf. “Was it yours? Your mom’s?” I take a deep breath, try to dispel the image of Lauren losing her balance, branches snapping as she falls . . .
“We don’t wear scarves.” Brynn shivers, glances toward her house. A leaf drifts from her tousled hair. “Is it evidence?”
“They don’t know yet. I need to ask you something. Do you know anything about someone breaking into my house?”
“What? Are you kidding me? What are you talking about?”
“Someone broke in.” I keep my voice modulated.
“Are you accusing me?” Her eyes go cold again.
“I’m not accusing anyone. I’m just asking.”
“I sneak out sometimes, but I’m not a burglar.”
“Only one thing is missing, a special blue dress. My neighbor saw a car parked across the street similar to your mom’s car.”
“Lots of people have cars like that,” she says, kicking at the ground. “No way would I ever break into anyone’s house.”
“So, it must’ve been someone else.”
“I did drive by yesterday—”
“You were there?”
“But I didn’t break in. I can’t believe you would say that.”
“Why did you drive by?”
“I wanted to talk to you.”
“But you didn’t stop in?”
“You weren’t home yet.” She looks at her feet.
“You parked across the street and sat there in your car?”
“Yeah, so? I didn’t know what to do. I wanted to just drive around.”
“You don’t have to explain,” I say. The air sinks into my lungs like ice water. “I shouldn’t have brought it up now. It just shocked me, with everything going on, to go home and find my house ransacked.”
She shivers again and tucks her hands up into her sleeves. “I don’t get why people do that, breaking and entering. I didn’t see anyone when I was over there. Must’ve happened after I left.”
I shove my hands into my pockets. My fingers are going numb. “Maybe the police will come up with something, fingerprints.”
“They won’t be mine,” she says.
“It would be okay if they were,” I say. “I would understand.”
She glares at me, her nose red in the cold. “But it wasn’t me.”
“I get it. We don’t need to say any more about it.” But the stain on my bedroom wall, the glass smashed on the floor—the violence haunts me, the image of a stranger’s fingers sifting through my clothes, opening my dresser drawers, invading my private space. Brynn says it wasn’t her, and even if it was, I could chalk it up to the temporary insanity of grief. I take the photograph from my pocket, hand it to her. “That’s the dress your mom gave me. The one I’m talking about.”
She holds the photograph close to her face, as if its secrets will come into focus when pushed against her nose. “Where did you find this picture?” She turns it over, looks at the back, then holds the picture away from her face, toward the light.
“I’ve had it for years. It was taken a long time ago.”
“That’s an awesome dress. Looks like one of a kind. It would be hard for someone to hide it, you know, wear it around and not get caught.”
“I agree with you there,” I say.
“My mom and dad and you . . . you were all friends back then.”
“You didn’t know that?” I say, trying not to sound floored.
“You guys look, like, way young.”
“We were.”
Branches crackle in the woods, and someone emerges from the shadows. I freeze, but it’s a slight figure, a girl with a mop of orange and black hair shot through with blond highlights. A distinctly feminine face, delicate features. As she approaches us, multiple earrings and nose rings shine in the light. She stops next to Brynn, shoves her hands into the pockets of her skinny jeans.
“Who is this?” I say. “A friend?”
Brynn squares her shoulders, juts out her chin. “This is Karina, my girlfriend. My girlfriend girlfriend.”
“Okay,” I say. I’m not shocked—although I did not expect a girl wearing quite so many decorations. Her dark eyes shine with boldness. “Hey,” she says.
“Hey.” I extend my hand, and she shakes it clumsily, her fingers warm. I look at Brynn. She glares at me, as if defying me to ask more questions.
“Is this why your mom was sending you to a boarding school?” I say. “Because of Karina?”
Brynn looks past me, blinking fast. She draws a deep breath. “My mom wasn’t, like, totally happy. She caught us in my room. But she didn’t care that I was into girls.”
Karina takes her hands from her pockets, pretends to examine her fingernails.
“Does your dad care?” I say.
Brynn reaches out to grip Karina’s hand, as if the two of them are on a life raft on a roiling ocean.
“He doesn’t know, does he?” I say.
“I’ll tell him when the time is right.” Brynn looks at the picture again. “My dad was really into you . . . He’s staring at you like he’s totally in love with you.”
He’s in profile, turned to face me on his right, while Lauren looks on from his left. It’s difficult to read his expression. Jensen, stuck in the middle. Who took the photograph that night? The waitress? It was Jensen’s birthday. Cake crumbs litter our plates.
“It’s an old photograph, like I said,” I say. “I don’t remember.”
“Why are you carrying this around then?”
“I took it to show the detective the dress.”
“My mom looks good in it.”
“She does,” I say, my gut twisting.
“But you and my dad were in love. Don’t deny it. I’m not stupid. So why do you look sad?”
“Do I look sad? Really?” I peer closely at the photograph. Perhaps I already knew what was to come. “I think a sad song was playing.”
“How long were you going out with my dad?”
Months. “I can’t recall exactly.”
“He never talks about it. I asked him once how he met Mom, and he said, ‘Through a friend.’ But my mom told me all these stories about how they were together so much, and their relationship was so strong, and they could, like, survive anything. But this is like, whoa.”
“Totally a surprise,” Karina says.
I swallow, the sky tilting. “Brynn, your dad and I . . . were involved. Maybe your parents didn’t want you to know. I’m not sure why. It was so long ago.”
“He left you for my mom. Didn’t he? Is that how he met her? Through you?”
I inhale, let out my breath slowly, one, two, three. I’m in the apartment, opening the bedroom door. There’s a steady drip from the faucet in the bathroom. My answer for Jensen. I can’t wait to tell him.
“Marissa?” Brynn says. “Am I asking personal questions? It’s just . . . this is about my mom and dad.”
“I know, it’s okay. The way things happened. It’s a bit confusing now.”
She blows upward, her bangs lifting from her forehead. “She never told me. And now I can’t even ask her. Maybe I would’ve seen her going out if I’d even been home.” Her voice breaks.
“But—I thought she picked you up from the party.”
She wipes her nose with the back of her hand. “She did, but I sneaked
out again. She probably thought I was in my room asleep.”
“You were out with Karina,” I say.
Karina plays with one of her many earrings.
“We went up in the tree house,” Brynn whispers. “The moon was full, and . . . we saw Anna.”
My heart stops—the air stops. My breathing stops. “What? When? Doing what?”
“She was out taking pictures. She sometimes does that. I don’t know what time.”
“Did you tell the police?”
“I couldn’t. They would want to know what I was doing outside. Karina’s parents are, like, really . . .”
“They would send me away for reprogramming or even worse,” Karina says.
“You saw Anna. Are you sure?” My voice comes from far away, down a long tunnel.
“Like, a thousand percent sure,” Brynn says. “I recognized her bird pajamas. She was crouching behind the hedge, near her room. I was going to go down and talk to her, but she climbed back in her window.”
“You didn’t tell anyone. Nobody at all.”
“I knew she would get in trouble. I would’ve gotten in trouble, too.”
“Did you see anything else? Your mom? Anyone? The motion sensor light?”
“No, I wish I did,” Brynn says. “I wish more than anything. Maybe I could have saved her.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
“Brynn lies about everything,” Nathan says on the phone as I’m driving back to my cottage. “Jensen told me he’s having problems with her. Think about it. She denied breaking into your house. How can you believe anything she says?” His tinny voice echoes on speakerphone, as if he’s on an orbiting space station instead of at work.
“If Anna was out there and she saw something—”
“I don’t want the police interrogating my kid. This will traumatize her even more. Give her some time at her mother’s house.”
“You don’t think this is important?”
“She didn’t see anything. She doesn’t know what happened.”
I pull over to the shoulder, the windshield wipers beating a relentless rhythm. “How can you be so sure? I understand you want to protect Anna, but Lauren was murdered.”
“Whoa, we don’t know that,” he says.
