by Edwin Hill
“Then I’m staying too.”
“You need to see if you can find Daphne in Portland. We need to split up and cover as much ground as we possibly can. You should go now. You’ll want as much of the day as possible.”
“There is no way, no way in hell I’m leaving you here,” Morgan said, but he could hear himself losing in his own voice. Still, he scrolled through the contacts on his phone. When Hester asked who he was calling, he shushed her.
“Don’t shush me,” she said.
“I found her,” he said into the phone. “Here, you talk to her.”
Hester took the phone, glanced at Angela White’s name on the screen, and strolled away through the garden, seeming to mostly listen for the next few moments. When she came back, she handed the phone to Morgan. “Angela has today and tomorrow off,” she said. “She’s watching Real Housewives, but she’ll meet you in Portland. Meanwhile, I’ll hang out on the porch here. I’ll probably die of boredom, but someone has to be here if that redhead decides to show up.”
Out in the harbor, the ferry blew its horn.
Morgan narrowed his eyes. “You have to call and tell me if you get any news. Any news at all. Or no news. No secrets.”
“Same to you,” Hester said. “This’ll only work if we talk to each other.”
“Agreed. And one more thing. I’m taking Kate with me.”
“Nope,” Hester said. “She’s staying with me.”
“You’re on an island in the middle of nowhere, with a murderer and at least two if not three missing persons cases. And you have Oliver to deal with too. Don’t you think she’ll be safer with me?”
Hester had the decency not to answer.
“I’m not debating this,” Morgan said. “Dog, kid, with me. You, on the porch, waiting, and I’ll meet you in Boothbay Harbor tonight when the last ferry comes in. That’s the only way you’re getting rid of me.”
“I can’t,” Hester said.
“What’s the worst thing that could happen?”
“You lose her at the park. I know you do.”
“Angela will be there to keep me in line. She’s a police detective! Waffles will be there too.”
Hester fought off tears. “What if there’s another storm?”
“But there won’t be,” Morgan said. “And if there is, she’ll be with me, and I’ll call you, and we’ll ride out the storm together. Remember when Kate came to stay with us and all you wanted was a day to yourself? I’m giving you one.”
“But I don’t want it anymore!”
Morgan took her hands in his and pulled her in. As much as he wanted to, he couldn’t help her. When they found Daphne, Kate would be hers again, and Hester would have plenty of time on her own. It was the only way it could be. They stood on the porch for another five minutes till Hester’s sobbing subsided. Morgan didn’t know how to make this pain end, and as much as he wanted to, he wondered if it ever would. Finally, without a word, Hester put Waffles on a leash, went into the B and B, got Kate and Oliver out of bed and dressed, and walked down to the ferry, where passengers had already begun to disembark. A state trooper watched the few passengers waiting to leave, asking them to leave their names and phone numbers. “In case we need to follow up on anything,” the trooper said.
Morgan jotted down his information. Hester handed him Waffles’s leash and kissed him on the cheek while Kate and Oliver said their goodbyes and promised to Face-Time each other. “I’ll see you in a few hours,” Hester said, crouching to let the dog lap at her face. “You need to go.”
“Say goodbye to Aunt Hester,” Morgan said to Kate.
“Bye, Aunt Hester,” Kate said, skipping along a few steps.
“Go,” Hester said, shortly. “Now.”
Morgan turned and left without another word, holding Kate’s hand as they crossed the gangway. He understood Hester better than anyone else in the world, even better than Daphne, and he knew that this decision had broken her in a way that he hoped would help her heal stronger than before. He found a spot on the upper deck, lifting Kate onto his hip and standing at the railing while the crew untied the lines. Down below, Hester’s feet were rooted to the ground, her hands balled up in fists, Oliver at her side. Morgan could see her using every bit of resolve to keep herself from leaping across the water as the ferry pulled from the pier. “Wave to Aunt Hester,” he said to Kate.
“Bye!” Kate shouted, waving with her whole body.
Waffles sat back and bayed. And Morgan waved too. Hester didn’t wave back.
CHAPTER 18
The state police had pulled the plywood covering from most of the windows at the Victorian, but Rory still felt as though he needed a hazmat suit when he arrived and walked into the stench. It smelled like a forest of dead creatures rotting in the walls. Upstairs, he found Barb Kelley in Annie’s room. “What a dump!” she said. “You must keep this place hidden from the summer folks, or else they wouldn’t come back.”
She’d tied her hair back with a teal-colored scrunchie and wore white Keds and a pink sweatshirt with puff paint that read SHOP AHOY! “How often do you come out here?” she asked.
“Not often,” Rory said. He tried to squash the defensiveness in his voice, which somehow even made it worse. “I mean, do you follow up on every drug call you get? Besides, most of the stuff on the island is legal, prescription. Pills. I haven’t seen anything like heroin.”
“Listen,” Barb said. “I’m asking because I need to know the answer, not because I’m trying to get you fired or reprimanded, though I do need to ask about that little incident between you and Vaughn Roberts yesterday. What was going on between the two of you?”
“Oh, Vaughn and I are just . . . we’ve known each other too long. We like each other and hate each other at the same time.”
“Like brothers, then?” Barb asked.
“Nothing like brothers.”
“You’re holding something back,” Barb said. “Something you’re not telling me. Spill.” She folded her arms across her chest. “And I’ll warn you, it’s a little after nine in the morning? We can stand here till nightfall. I can outwait anyone and everyone.”
Rory caught himself rolling his eyes. “You make me feel like a teenager,” he said.
“It’s my super power.”
“Fine,” Rory said, telling Barb what he’d seen happen between Lydia and Vaughn in the ravine and the way Trey had reacted.
“Sweetie,” Barb said. The smile. “That would have been good to know yesterday when that girl found the body. And it would have been good to know when that wifey came in to make her statement. It tells me something that she didn’t bring it up herself. Now we’ll need to pick up Lydia Pelletier again and get her to spill.”
“Maybe it would have come up if I’d sat in on the interview.”
When Lydia had come by the community center the night before, Barb had sent Rory home. When he’d tried to argue, she’d said, “We both know having you sit in on this isn’t a good idea.”
Now she looked Rory right in the eye. “Any other secrets?”
Rory had plenty of secrets. One was that after Lydia had finished talking to Barb, she’d come to him, pounding on his door. He hadn’t asked what she’d told Barb, and she hadn’t mentioned Pete. He let her into the house, and she collapsed on his bed, fully clothed. He sat in a chair beside her all night, and they grieved in silence. In the morning, he made her coffee and they sat at the kitchen table. When the call came in from Barb asking him to meet her here, he left Lydia at his house, a stream of morning light shining on her sleepy face.
It had been the best night of his life. The best morning too.
“I’ll let you know if I think of anything else,” he said to Barb.
“If you do,” Barb said, “make sure it comes out of your mouth and into my ear.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Rory surveyed the room. Annie had done her best to make the space her own. The room was clean, much cleaner than any other part of the house. An
d the bed, surrounded by furniture, was like a sad island of safety.
Barb lifted one corner of the mattress. Rory took the other side, and they flipped it, but nothing was underneath. A black knapsack leaned against the wall. In it, Rory found a dead burner phone and a wad of money stuffed into an interior pocket. “I’m surprised no one’s stolen this,” he said. “We should charge this phone up. See what’s on it.”
Barb nodded toward the bureaus. “Start on that end, and I’ll start on this one.”
Most of the bureaus were empty, with swollen drawers that groaned when they opened, but a few minutes in, Barb said, “Yuck,” and lifted a white towel crusted over with a yellowish substance. “I’m pretty certain that was spew,” she said, dropping it into an evidence bag.
Rory pictured Annie, on this mattress, in this house, pawing at another human being while surrounded by strangers and filth and couldn’t help but have a little sympathy for the woman. In another drawer, he found a pile of clothing, and in another a small stash of books. When he flipped through a dog-eared copy of Jane Eyre, a locket of thin baby hair fell out.
“Probably that girl’s,” Barb said. “Her daughter.”
She placed it in an evidence bag and marked where they’d found it. Rory flipped through another book, and a coffee card from Doughnuts and Pies fell out. It had eight cups checked off. “Two to go,” Rory said, “and she’ll have a free cup.”
“Let’s make sure she gets it,” Barb said as her phone rang.
She answered and walked into the hallway, only to return a moment later. “That was the medical examiner. There wasn’t much trace evidence on the body, but guess the cause of death.”
“Wasn’t it obvious?” Rory asked. “He had a knife in his back.”
“So guess,” Barb said, and waited.
When Rory started to say, “Stabbing?” she seemed to snatch the word right out of his throat and finish it for him. “Stabbing!” she said. “You’d think that was right, and if it was, I could have told you that on my own. But there’s a reason we paid to bring the good ol’ doctor out here by helicopter. I’ll give you one more guess.”
“Drowning?” Rory said.
“That would be a good one, too! And that would have been my second guess. But it’s wrong. I’ll give it to you because you won’t get it, even if I gave you a hundred guesses. But when I do, you have to tell me on a scale from one to ten how surprised you are. Deal?”
“Deal,” Rory said.
“Overdose! Fentanyl.”
“The same shit that showed up in Portland,” Rory said.
And the same shit that probably killed Pete.
“You got it! And I’ll take that as a ten. And it keeps this house right in the middle of things.”
Rory took a step into the room. The whole building felt as if it might collapse around them. “Had Trey been using?” he asked.
“Good question!” Barb said. “And the answer is . . . undetermined, at least according to the doc. He says that there aren’t any injection sites but that there are lots of ways to take drugs. Smoking. Snorting. You know, the usual, and they’ll need to run more tests. Have you noticed anything unusual?”
“Just Trey being a jerk,” Rory said.
“Trey being a jerk is par for the course,” Barb said. “Or was, I should say. You didn’t like him, did you?”
“I hated him, but that’s between you and me.”
“Don’t worry, your secret’s safe.” And she smiled.
Rory should have kept the secret to himself.
Barb paced around the room. “What can you tell me about this house, besides that it stinks?”
“It’s been abandoned for as long as I can remember,” Rory said. “When I was a kid, we thought the house was haunted and would torture the summer kids by bringing them out here and daring them to go inside on their own. Then we’d find ways to scare them.”
“Who’s ‘we’?”
“Me, Lydia, Vaughn.”
“The three of you show up together a lot.”
“So?”
“You said it yourself. The prime suspect is the wife.”
“I thought the prime suspect was Daphne.”
“Maybe she is. But you still need to be objective.”
Rory thought about Lydia, asleep, her breathing steady, her arms splayed across the bedspread. He could have touched her. But he’d never have done that, not without permission. He was her protector.
“I’ll do my best,” he said. This time he knew enough to lie.
“I’ll be watching,” Barb said as Nate came to the door. “Come downstairs,” she added. “We’re talking to Frankie Sullivan again, and I need my bad cop.”
They descended the backstairs to where Frankie sat on a chair with Ethan perched on her knee. Nate hovered by the back door. Barb produced a candy bar from her pocket. “You mind?” she asked Frankie, who shook her head.
Ethan took the chocolate bar and ripped the wrapper off, eating it like someone might steal it from him.
“Has he had breakfast?” Barb asked.
“Yes,” Frankie snapped.
“Good, just checking.”
“When can we leave?”
“You can go whenever you want, really,” Barb said, taking a chair and sitting beside her. “As long as you tell me where. But it’d be great if you could stick around another day, maybe two.”
“Whatever.”
“I’ll take that as a yes. Where do you think you’ll go?”
“Probably back to Ohio. I don’t know where else I’d go. Certainly not to Portland.”
“Is Ohio where you started taking drugs?”
Frankie glared at her. “I don’t take drugs.”
“Sweetie, only the truth, okay?” Barb said. “And let’s start with this: Had you ever met Trey Pelletier before you came here?”
“Why would I have?”
“That’s not an answer,” Barb said. “And he was a state cop, and you, from what I can see and despite what you claim, are a junkie. It’s not out of the realm of possibility that you might run across each other.”
Ethan tugged on Frankie’s sleeve. “Mommy?” he said.
“What is it, sweetie?” she asked.
“Could Thomas take us away?”
“I could use a minute,” Frankie said.
“For what?” Barb asked.
“The bathroom.”
“Stay put. You can shoot up or snort or whatever you do after we’re done.” Barb waved Nate over. “Take the boy outside, would you? Find that train and play with him.”
“Tank engine!” Ethan said.
Frankie seemed reluctant to give up Ethan and watched as the officer walked out through the back door.
“He seems like a good kid,” Barb said. “One who should have a chance, right? Tell me, did you know Detective Pelletier? Had you ever run into him in Portland or here?”
“I’d seen him around,” Frankie said.
“And what about other people in the house here,” Barb asked. “What about your brother? Seth, right? Where is he anyway?”
“He’ll show up.”
“He’d better. And I know he’s not your brother, so what is he to you?”
“He takes care of me,” Frankie said with a shrug. “He watches us. Me and Ethan.”
“Did he take care of Trey for you?”
“No!” Frankie said with as much force as Rory imagined she could muster. “I don’t know,” she added with a sigh.
“Listen to me,” Barb said. “I want to make sure you understand what’s going on here. We have a dead cop. That’s a big deal. And we have a shipment of drugs that’s making its way across Maine. That’s a big deal. A woman who lived in this house with you has disappeared, and that’s a big deal. And your son disappeared for nearly twenty-four hours and showed up on your back step, which, to me, sounds like someone may have been sending you a warning. That’s the biggest deal of all, because somehow I bet all of this is connected to you and
this mysterious friend you have wandering around this island.” Barb turned to Rory. “Have you seen this guy?”
“He was gone when I came to pick him up. I’ve only heard his name.”
“If you don’t start talking,” Barb said to Frankie, “I’ll start making those connections myself, and it won’t be good for you or your son. Bottom line is, we need to find your friend and we need the truth. And that means now, not next week.”
Frankie sank into herself right before Rory’s eyes. Barb was better at bad cop than she gave herself credit for. “I’ve only been here a few weeks,” Frankie mumbled. “Annie was here much longer.”
“Did Annie know Trey?” Rory asked.
“I don’t know Annie,” Frankie said. “I don’t know anyone!”
“You know Seth,” Barb said. “And he showed up out of the blue on the day your son went missing. That’s what you told me. Walk me through that day again.”
“I don’t remember it.”
“It was two days ago. You got up. What happened then?”
“I looked for Ethan.”
“What time was it.”
“I don’t know. Maybe ten, eleven.”
“Eleven o’clock,” Barb said. “Was Ethan here?”
“I looked for him,” Frankie said.
Barb flipped back through her notebook. She sat up, getting right into Frankie’s face. “Do you remember the panic?” she asked. “Last time I talked to you, you told me that you had lunch and put Ethan down for a nap. It says right here that you had peanut butter.” Barb jabbed a finger at her notes. “But now, are you saying Ethan wasn’t around when you woke up? At eleven in the morning? Because you didn’t panic till almost four o’clock.”
“I thought he wandered off.” Frankie looked at Rory. “You said . . .”
“Kids wander off,” Rory said. “They do it all the time.”
“So,” Barb said. “Let me get back to my question. If you thought Ethan wandered off, what made you panic? What didn’t you know? Or what did you know that made you panic?”
Frankie leaned forward and rubbed her temple. “I’ll need a deal,” she said.
“We’ll talk deals later,” Barb said. “Right now, you need to spill.”
