by Edwin Hill
Hester turned to her. “He had a knife? What happened to it? Are your fingerprints on it?”
“I don’t even know if he had one.”
“You just said he did.”
“It was dark. I saw something flash. I thought he put me in that cellar.”
“Maybe he did put you there,” Hester said. “But he couldn’t have unlocked that door to let you out, because he’s been dead since yesterday. Besides, I thought Vaughn attacked you. You hit him with a log. You were in his basement.”
“It was Vaughn,” Daphne said, trying to convince herself. But she hadn’t seen Vaughn on the beach. It had been Trey.
Hester stopped. She held out a hand so that Mindy sat. “Where have you been for the last year?” she asked. “You look terrible. And who is Annie anyway?”
Daphne could see her friend had moved beyond relief—or whatever emotions flooded through you when you found a long-lost and imprisoned friend—beyond that hug and to anger.
“Annie’s someone nicer than I am,” Daphne said. “Or, I thought she would be. She’s someone with friends.”
“What do you call me?”
“My friend. I’ve always had you. But Annie sipped chardonnay and joined book clubs, or at least that’s who I wanted her to be. It didn’t work though.”
Hester started to say something and stopped.
“What?” Daphne said.
“I told myself you’d left to become something, to become someone you’ve always wanted to be,” Hester said. “I thought you’d be—I don’t know—I thought you’d be starting a new career or saving the world. Or even just dating someone fantastic. I thought you’d fix yourself. I’d never have let you go if I’d known it was for . . . for this.” Hester waved at Daphne’s clothes, at her hair, at her pockmarked skin and yellowing teeth, at everything that had shamed her. “Kate needs someone she can trust!”
“I can’t wait to see Kate,” Daphne said quickly, the words spilling out. In part, she said them because she thought they might be what Hester wanted to hear, and in part she said them to convince herself. “I can’t wait to hold Kate in my arms. I have missed her more than you can possibly imagine. A mother loves her child more than life itself. More than oxygen. I made the choice to leave, and now . . .” She let her voice trail off.
Hester turned toward town. “She misses you too. She has a photo of you by her bed. Sometimes when I’m reading her a story, we switch out your name for whoever the story is about.”
“Princesses?”
“Mostly.”
Daphne hated princesses. She hated that they were weak and girly and needed men to complete their stories. Mostly, though, she hated that they’d infiltrated her life with Kate, and that Kate had made them hers, that she’d accepted them and welcomed them without asking permission. And that Daphne had somehow lost control. What else had Kate embraced in this last year? Did she love broccoli or the Greek myths or making bubbles in the tub? Did she have friends at school, ones Daphne wouldn’t like, ones that could turn her mean or sad or lonely? Had she become so much her own person that Daphne wouldn’t even recognize her anymore?
They stepped out of the tree line, and Hester’s phone beeped to life. And she was typing a text. Daphne put a hand to Hester’s, holding it tighter than she’d expected.
“What is it that you want?” Hester asked, her index finger hovering over Send.
“I don’t know,” Daphne said. “I haven’t known.”
“I can’t help you if you don’t tell me.”
On the path, the sun caught the shiny face of a quarter. Daphne imagined a world where a quarter no longer mattered.
“I want a beer,” Daphne said. “And something to eat. I want a burger, and an enormous slab of blueberry pie.”
Hester glanced at the time on her phone and deleted the text message. “First a doctor. If it’s okay, we’ll have a beer. You have till four o’clock. Not a minute longer.”
* * *
Rory drove too fast down the narrow lanes. He’d done it!
He’d secured the scene and apprehended the suspect. He’d cuffed him and read him his rights, and in a few moments he’d deliver him to the state police.
He checked the rearview mirror. Vaughn stared out the window, watching the people in town trying to look in, trying to get a glimpse of the kidnapper, the murderer, the drug dealer. “You took those kids, too, didn’t you?” Rory said. “You used them.”
“You know I didn’t,” Vaughn said, his voice too cool.
Vaughn should be afraid, but he hardly seemed to care. He grinned in a way that made Rory want to haul him out of the Jeep, make him kneel, and then kick him in the face. Always, since the very first day Rory had known him, since before time, Vaughn had had that easy charm. He had it now, even as he faced a life in prison.
“Motive and opportunity,” Rory said. “You have them both.”
“You done good today, Rory-boy,” Vaughn said.
“Don’t. Don’t call me that.”
“Annie said there were pills in my basement,” Vaughn said. “Bet you saw ’em too. I wouldn’t be much of a drug dealer if I left evidence like that out for the world to see.”
“I saw what I saw.”
“And Annie. She’s been locked up since yesterday, but the door was suddenly open. It was like someone wanted her to be found or wanted her to escape.”
“Stop talking,” Rory said.
At the community center, a small crowd had gathered.
“I’ve always watched out for you,” Vaughn said.
“I don’t need you.”
“I hope to hell not,” Vaughn said.
Rory hauled him out of the Jeep and led him through the crowd.
“Hey, Vaughn,” someone shouted. “Do you need me to clear your traps?”
“Check with me in the morning,” Vaughn said. “I should know by then.”
“You should take him up on the offer,” Rory whispered. “You won’t be here in the morning. You’ll be on the mainland at the county jail.”
He opened the door to see Barb Kelley hunched over a laptop computer. She smiled. That’s right, Vaughn, you’re done, Rory thought. Barb took Vaughn’s arm from Rory. “Keys?” she said.
Rory handed her the key to the cuffs, and in one swift move Detective Kelley had slipped them off Vaughn’s wrists.
“Coffee?” she asked.
Rory started to answer, but Vaughn said, “Got anything stronger?”
“Not right now,” she said.
“Then I take it black.”
“Hah! Get it yourself, Roberts,” Barb said, like she was talking to her annoying little brother. “And do you recognize this?”
She laid a photo of a bloody knife with a blue hilt on the table.
“Looks like my knife,” Vaughn said. “The one I keep on my boat. Maybe I killed Trey.”
“Hilarious,” Barb said.
“What the hell is going on?” Rory asked.
But no one answered.
CHAPTER 22
There was no news from Hester. Morgan could tell himself it was because parts of the island didn’t have service, but why give her the benefit of the doubt? She’d been lying to him for days now.
He looked out the window as Angela drove over the bridge toward the marina, and he thought about what they’d learned from Sophie Johnson, if only to keep his mind off what Hester might be doing. Back at the house, when Angela pressed her for more details, Sophie had insisted that she’d already said too much. “There are drugs all over Maine,” she added. “The rest you’ll have to get from Vaughn.”
Now Angela pulled the minivan into the parking lot of an unassuming building on the edge of a marina. This was the club where Sophie said Daphne may have worked.
“You holding up?” Angela asked Morgan.
“Sure,” he said, shaking the thoughts about Hester away. “What do we know so far? Vaughn Roberts is having an affair with Lydia Pelletier.”
“And fentanyl
is making its way through Maine. And it’s killed at least one person on the island that we know of.”
“How could Daphne have anything to do with any of this?” Morgan asked.
“I’ve never met Daphne,” Angela said, catching his eye and glancing in the rearview mirror to see what Kate was up to. Morgan turned to his niece, who’d been quiet for far too long. Kate was pretending to play with Sebastian, but he could tell she was hanging on every word they said. He forgot how much the girl heard and how much she understood, or that finding Daphne was important to her, too.
But to Angela, he realized, Daphne was a blank slate, waiting to be filled. And from what Angela had learned in the months since she’d come into their lives, Morgan suspected she didn’t have many charitable thoughts toward his sister. Why would she? Daphne was the woman who’d abandoned her own child. She didn’t know his sister, the girl who’d crawled into bed beside him and cried with him when their father died, or the high school senior who’d led Liechtenstein through the Model UN. And she certainly didn’t know the young woman who’d taken three busses to get from Wellesley to Amherst on the day Morgan’s high school girlfriend, BranDee, dumped him via e-mail. Daphne had shown up at the UMass campus with a bag of weed and six boxes of Oreos and had refused to leave till he’d written out a list of reasons why it was good to be free.
“I’ll leave number one to you,” Daphne said. “But spelling your name with a capital D? That has to be number two.”
Morgan was stoned enough to laugh.
“It’s a terrible joke!” Daphne said. “I was being mean! She can’t help what her parents named her!”
“But she can,” Morgan said, Oreo crumbs spewing from his mouth. “Her real name is Jennifer.”
“Then maybe it should be number one,” Daphne had said.
“My sister’s more than what you know,” Morgan said to Angela. “More than what you’ve heard about.”
“I don’t know anything about your sister or her choices,” Angela said. “I do know that you and Hester have done pretty well in an extraordinary situation, and sometimes I don’t know if you realize how extraordinary it is. You both plod through this as if it’s normal. It isn’t, but you make it as normal as you can, and that’s good. I’m a cop. I see ugly things, every day. This situation”—Angela jerked a thumb toward Kate—“doesn’t compare. You have a good thing here. You watch out for each other. You care about each other. It could be so, so much worse, and I hope you know that.”
Morgan knew more than he got credit for. But he still wanted to find his sister, to see that she was safe and healthy. He wanted her to be the person he wanted her to be, instead of the person she was, which could only lead to disappointment. And he knew that too.
Inside the club, with Kate at his side and Waffles on her leash, Morgan watched as Angela showed a photo of Daphne to anyone they could find, till finally, in the kitchen, the chef nodded. “Sure, she worked here, but not for long. Maybe a week.”
“What happened?” Angela asked.
The chef shook his head and went back to chopping carrots.
“This isn’t official,” Angela said.
“Then what am I doing, talking to you?”
“We’re hoping nothing happened to her.”
“She had a run-in with the manager and didn’t show up the next day. She’d have been fired anyway.”
“Why?”
“We always lose stuff to staff. Saltshakers. Silverware. That kind of thing. It was a bit much with that one.”
“She was stealing?”
“You’ll have to ask the manager.”
“Do you know where she went?”
“Someone like her?” the chef said. “She was pretty down-and-out. I’d start out by Northfield. There’s a homeless contingent there. See if anyone recognizes her.”
Out in the parking lot, Angela put a hand on Morgan’s arm. “We don’t know if anything he said was true.”
“Let’s find out, then,” Morgan said.
Northfield Street turned out to be a run-down section of town where desperate-looking people hung out in doorways and alleys. A woman who looked as if she hadn’t eaten or slept in a month wandered from one empty doorway to the next. A man in a dirty army jacket waved a cup and grinned through missing teeth. Angela parked the minivan but kept the engine running. “This is where you and the rest of your team stay on the ark,” she said. “Doors locked. Phone on. Nine-one-one primed to go. I’ll see what I can find out.”
“You shouldn’t go in without backup,” Morgan said.
“I’m not going in anywhere,” Angela said. “I’m talking to those guys there and coming back here. But remember, you ain’t the backup. Call the cops if you see anything. Otherwise, I’ll be back in two minutes. Got it?”
Morgan nearly protested.
“There’s no argument,” Angela said. “Either you stay here, or we leave. Those are the choices.”
“Fine,” Morgan said, and watched as Angela approached two men playing chess. She flashed her badge, and one of the men held up his hands as if to say he had nothing to offer, and Morgan could imagine Angela’s reassuring voice, a voice that told the man she was looking for a friend, nothing more. Angela was one part Earth mother, one part counselor, and one part warrior. He often wondered how they’d gotten along before knowing her. He also wondered how any perp could avoid spilling his whole story once Angela started in on an interrogation. She made you want to bare your soul. Or at least she made him want to.
“Uncle Morgan?”
Morgan glanced into the back seat. “Hmm,” he said.
“Does Mommy live here?”
“I don’t think so. Not now, at least.”
“What’s down and out?”
“It’s when . . . I guess it’s when you don’t have a lot of luck.”
“Are you down and out?” Kate asked, and Morgan thought that, no, he’s wasn’t. Not now, at least. He hadn’t been down and out since his first date with Hester.
“Waffles wants to get out,” Kate said.
“We’ll sit here for a bit longer,” he said.
“How much longer?”
“A minute, maybe two.”
“I can count to sixty.”
“You might need to do it a few times.”
As Kate began to count, he watched as Angela moved on to a man with greasy, dark hair that hung to his shoulders. They spoke intently, the man’s wiry limbs waving with kinetic energy.
“Uncle Morgan?”
“Hmm?” He turned in his seat.
“What comes after thirty-nine?”
“You know.”
“Forty.”
“That’s right.”
“Uncle Morgan?”
“What is it, sweetie?”
“Look.”
Kate pointed to where Angela was on the ground. And the man was running. Morgan didn’t think. He moved, stepping out of the car and into the man’s path. It had been a long time since anyone had run full force into him, and it hurt more than he could have imagined to be flung to the ground. The man fell too, head over heels into a pile of arms and legs, and before he could flee again, Angela had tackled him to the ground.
“Don’t move,” she said. “Not even your little toe.”
The man rolled onto his stomach and held his hands at his sides. He’d done this before. Angela frisked him and told him to sit with his back to the car. A gash across his forehead dripped blood. “Police brutality,” he said.
“Shut up,” Angela said.
With adrenaline coursing through him, Morgan understood now how Angela did this every day.
The man started to cry, begging not to be arrested.
“Oh, for Christ’s sake,” Angela said. “Stop blubbering and sit on your hands. Answer my questions and you can go. Give me lip, and I’ll haul you in for dealing.”
“I ain’t dealing.”
“Then why’d you run?” Angela said, and when he didn’t answer, she showed him
a photo of Daphne. “Tell me what you know about her.”
“Don’ know her.”
“Let’s go.”
“I seen her around.”
“When?”
“Few months ago.”
“And how did you know her?”
“She was around, you know. Like everyone else. We get to know each other. Or at least the look of each other. She smart, angry, ready to blow. Goes to the Walmart.”
“Where’s that?”
“Outside of town. About a mile. You can walk there.”
“She’d walk there to work?”
“Nah, to return things,” the man said.
“Got it,” Angela said. “Who else did she hang out with? Who were her friends?”
“I don’t know nothing,” the man said.
“I’ll get the cuffs,” Angela said.
“Okay, okay. Some girl named Emily. Haven’t seen her, not since the spring. She used to come here to score.”
“Emily what?”
“Don’t know. But I think she live over in Gorham. She blonde. Young. Maybe twenty. That’s all I got.”
“Get out of here,” Angela said.
After the man scurried away, Angela turned on Morgan. “I told you to stay in the car.”
“I wanted to see better.”
“No, you didn’t. You wanted to be a hero, and you could have gotten yourself killed. I need a lot of things. Like a new dishwasher. One thing I don’t need is a dead friend.”
Morgan had spent the last year sitting on the sidelines. Blocking that guy and slamming into the pavement had woken something in him. Maybe he’d needed an intervention as much as Hester had. As much as he wanted to find Daphne, even more he wanted answers. He wanted the truth, whatever it might be. And he wanted to find a path to where he and Hester should be, away from where they were right now. “What was that about Walmart?” he asked.
Angela glared at him. “It’s a junkie trick,” she finally said. “Steal things and return them. It’s how you make cash out of nothing.”
“Daphne’s a junkie?” he asked.
“We’ll have to find her to ask,” Angela said.
* * *
Dr. Feldman was probably in his early fifties, with the easy charm of someone who had it good. “I’m a shrink,” he said as he cleaned the cut on Daphne’s head in the room at the inn. “But I’m also usually the only doctor around on this island, so I’m up on my skills. Head wounds bleed,” he added. “This one’s not as bad as you might think. You won’t even need a stitch.”
