Saving Ben

by Ashley H. Farley

  It took a lot for Reed to convince Maddie to loosen her grip on her Tory Burch boots. He wrapped his arms around her and whispered in her ear, and whether he told her he’d buy her a new pair of boots or whether he promised her a weekend by the fire in his parents’ mountain ski lodge, his proposition seemed to placate her. Maddie smiled up at her lover, nodding her head, but she glared at Ben and me as she dropped her boots beside the front door on her way out.

  Ben and I walked them to their car.

  “Look, man,” Reed said to Ben, “I’m counting on you to be in the taproom at the club for the six o’clock football game tonight. That’s how sure I am this bitch will show up any second with some lame explanation.”

  “It’s a beautiful thought, bro,” Ben said, leaning back against the hood of the car. “But don’t hold your breath.”

  While Ben and Reed said their goodbyes, I wandered over to Emma’s car and lifted the door handle, surprised to find it unlocked. Once Reed and Maddie had driven off, I called Ben over. “Look at this shit,” I said, removing an oversized Michael Kors tote bag from the passenger seat. “Do you have any idea how much the bag alone costs?”

  Ben opened the back door and pulled out a large Louis Vuitton duffle. “No, but I’m pretty sure this one costs at least a grand. It looks like the little poor girl has found herself some rich bastard to wrap around her pinky finger.” Ben stuck his head inside the car. “Do you see her keys anywhere? Or her cell phone?”

  I found her keys in the cup holder and held them up, jingling them. “But I don’t see her phone, unless it’s in one of these bags.” I dumped the contents of the tote on the driver’s seat, and searched through the tubes of lipstick and tampons and other assorted bottom-of-pocketbook junk until I found a small satin satchel. I shook a pair of diamond studs and a sapphire ring out into my hand. “That little thief.”

  “Are those your earrings?” Ben asked, his eyes wide with horror. “The one’s MayMay left you?”

  “Yep, and this is Archer’s ring.” I slid the sapphire ring on my middle finger and looked up at my brother. “Ben, when Thompson and I came upstairs after my fight with Emma last night, I hid these earrings way back in the back of my bedside table drawer. Unless she snuck upstairs sometime during dinner or while we were watching the ball drop—and I seriously doubt that happened because I don’t remember her leaving the group—Emma took these earrings while Thompson and I were asleep.”

  Ben slumped against the car. “This is almost more than I can handle.” He placed the LV duffle on the hood of the car and ripped it open. “Holy shit,” he said, thumbing through a rubber-banded wad of cash. “All hundred-dollar bills.” He put the cash back and removed a small zippered case. “What the heck? Did she rob a jewelry store?” He reached inside the case and pulled out a handful of designer jewelry—David Yurman and Roberto Coin and the likes.

  I went around to the passenger’s side and began searching the glove compartment and down on the floorboard. “I’m guessing you want this back,” I said, handing him Emma’s computer. “Is the serial number registered in your name?”

  He shrugged. “I paid for it with my credit card, but I gave it to her as a gift. It’s not going to matter much if she’s dead, now is it?”

  “How dare her!” I screamed, slamming the car door shut. “That bitch came into our house as a guest, an unwanted one maybe but still a guest, and she stole from us. Not only did she rob us of our dignity by drugging us and putting us in this embarrassing situation, but she also took our most treasured possessions. If she were here now, I’d kill her myself.”

  “What’s going on here?” Detective Ericson called to us as he rounded the corner of the house. “The two of you may have saved us the many hours it would’ve taken to get a search warrant, but you’ve compromised the investigation. Whatever you found in there will not be allowed into evidence.”

  “This car is parked on my property, Detective,” I said. “Which in my book makes it fair game. This is an emergency. We were hoping to find her cell phone.”

  “And did you?” Breton asked, joining us.

  I shook my head. “No such luck.”

  She peered over our shoulders at the loot. “Did you find anything useful?”

  Ben and I stepped aside so the detectives could examine the contents of Emma’s bags. “She’s been babysitting for her aunt and uncle’s children out in Texas over the holidays,” Ben explained. “My guess is, Emma took these things from them, because she certainly couldn’t afford them herself.”

  “Is that her computer?” Detective Erickson asked, eyeing the MacBook Air that Ben was holding.

  “I’m not sure who it technically belongs to,” Ben said, “but I bought it for her last spring. It’s been in her possession ever since.”

  “Then I suggest we take it inside and see what we can find,” Erickson said. “Maybe a telephone number for her mother or her relatives in Texas.”

  As it turned out, Ben had already stored in his phone the number to Emma’s home in Altoona when she visited her mother at Christmas a year ago. While the two detectives disappeared into the living room to make the call, I took the computer to the kitchen where the rest of our guests were scrambling eggs and making yet another pot of coffee.

  I settled at the bar and flipped open the computer. “Knowing Emma, her password has something to do with money.”

  “Good guess,” Ben said, nodding. “Try gold.”

  Archer raised her eyebrow. “As in, digger? How’d you know?”

  Ben shrugged. “She told me.”

  I typed in the keys and waited. “That’s it. I can’t believe Emma actually set her password as gold.”

  Spotty glanced at us over his shoulder from the stove where he was scooping up eggs. “Seriously? After all she has put us through? Nothing would surprise me, even if we learned she was on a flight headed to Las Vegas right now.”

  “Except she wouldn’t have boarded a flight to Sin City without this.” I pulled the bundle of money out of Emma’s bag and held it up to show the others.

  Archer’s eyes grew wide. “Holy Moley! That’s a lot of cash.”

  Detective Ericson entered the room with his pocket-size notebook in his hand and his partner on his heels. “We were able to reach the girl’s mother, one Joyce Stone, but she hasn’t seen or heard from her daughter since Thanksgiving, during which time they had some sort of altercation. According to the police reports, when the mother called the daughter out for coming home stumbling drunk, the daughter came after her with a serrated kitchen knife of some sort. Fortunately, a nosy neighbor happened to be walking his dog by the kitchen window at the time and called 911.

  We glanced around the room at one another, our shocked expressions saying what are mouths were unable to speak.

  “The good news is that she was able to put us in touch with her aunt out in Texas,” Detective Breton said. “The bad news is that there’s more bad news.”

  Ericson cleared his throat and consulted his notebook. “Apparently, the aunt, one Claire Dennison, walked in on Emma and her husband in bed together.” Ignoring his partner’s scornful stare, the detective nodded his head enthusiastically in response to the gasps from our group. “How do you like that? Try to give the girl a break by offering her a job and look what happens. She sleeps with her husband and then robs her blind.”

  I held up the wad of money. “Did you ask them about this? Do they make a habit of leaving wads of hundred-dollar bills lying around? There’s at least five thousand dollars here.”

  Detective Breton took the bundle of money from me and placed it back in Emma’s bag. “I talked to Mrs. Dennison for a while. It’s actually very sad the way it all played out. Her daughters, Sally and Lena, worshipped their cousin Emma. These two little girls, neither of them older than ten, are the ones who walked in on their father and Emma in bed together. Naturally they were upset. So, while the mother and father were in another part of the house consoling their hysterical daughters,
their niece broke into their wall safe and cleaned it out before she took off.”

  “And she just happened to have the combination?” Ben asked what everyone else was wondering.

  Detective Breton pointed her finger at Ben. “That’s the interesting part. Neither Hollis Dennison nor his wife ever showed the safe to Emma, but she was in and out of it in less than ten minutes.”

  “That makes me want to throw up,” I said to the detectives. “I’m sure she’s searched all through this house and the one in Richmond. Talk about feeling violated. I hope you told them we would have their things sent right back to them.”

  Ericson nodded. “Only they said something about a leopard-skin fur coat. I don’t remember seeing it in the car.”

  “That’s because she’s wearing it,” Ben said.

  When both detectives looked at Ben suspiciously, I explained, “She had it on when she got here. She made a big deal about it.”

  “And she was wearing it during the fireworks,” Archer added.

  Breton walked over and stood behind me, looking over my shoulder. “Have you discovered anything useful on her computer?”

  I’d been skimming through Emma’s emails while we were talking. “Actually I have. For the past few days, Emma has been exchanging emails with her old boyfriend. His name is Peter Packham, and he goes to school in Florida—at Flagler, I think. Apparently he’s down there now, working during the Christmas break at some seafood restaurant.” I scrolled down, looking for a particular e-mail. “It says right here, dated yesterday, that she was planning to leave our house after midnight and drive down to see him. She even mentions stopping along the way in Savannah to get a few hours’ sleep.”

  “Now that’s disturbing,” Breton said, her face pinched and her lips puckered. “It’s evidence that Emma had concrete plans, which she’s probably missed out on. Can you find his contact information anywhere? The name or phone number where he works?”

  I checked her contacts folder and then scrolled back through the e-mails. “All I see is the name of the restaurant, the Crazy Lobster.”

  Detective Breton scribbled the name of the restaurant on an index card and stuffed it in her back pocket. “We’ll do our best to get in touch with him, but other than paying a visit to the Turners, there’s not much more we can do for the time being except wait.”

  “What can we do to help?” I asked the detectives.

  “You can pray that your friend makes it back safely.” Breton looked first at Ben and then me. “Because if she doesn’t, the two of you are going to have some explaining to do.”

  Twenty-Three

  A coin toss awarded Ben the privilege of calling our parents, who assured us they were on their way but that it would take them the better part of the afternoon to drive down from the mountains. Keeping one eye on the clock and the other on the dock, we stripped beds and washed sheets and moved our things around so the guys were now downstairs and the girls up, with the exception of Ben who returned to his own room down the hall from mine. After nibbling on leftover tenderloin for lunch, we broke into mini-search parties and combed the grounds looking for clues. As anticipated, the snow had melted, taking with it the only valuable evidence in the case. Our search succeeded only in killing time, at least an hour and a half of it. When George’s phone lines continued to go unanswered, I positioned myself by the french doors for the remainder of the afternoon. Focusing the binoculars across the creek at the yellow farmhouse on the hill, I watched and waited for any signs of life—a shadowy figure moving around inside the house, a car pulling into the driveway, the kitchen light coming on a dusk.

  Our parents arrived prepared for an emergency—a hurricane or a snowstorm or the crisis of a missing person—with a grocery bag full of junk food and a stack of old movies. Thompson poured a stiff bourbon for my father and an ample glass of Merlot for my mother, and waited with them on the sofa in the living room while the rest of us unloaded groceries and carried their bags to their room. My parents listened with patience and concern, asking pertinent questions and drawing their own conclusions without casting judgment. Their reaction was not at all what I had expected from them, but if ever there was a time for my parents to finally grow up, the night of this dismal New Year’s Day was it.

  For the rest of the evening, we ate hot wings and meatballs and chips covered in dip while watching one bowl game after another. Although no one mentioned it, everyone was aware of the seconds ticking away and the bell ringing the half hour on the ship’s clock on the mantle. Every minute we drifted further away from the alleged time of Emma’s disappearance, and every hour it became less likely she’d return.

  I slept very little that night, although I tried not to toss and turn for fear of waking Archer, who snored softly beside me. As light began to creep through the blinds, I finally dozed off, only to be startled awake again by the sound of a car coming down the gravel driveway. The events of the day before came back to me, flooding me with fear, paralyzing every part of my body except my eyes as they came to rest on the alarm clock beside me. It was already nine thirty, and the house was still silent. Eerily silent. No one banging pots and pans around in the kitchen. No coffee aromas were drifting up the stairs.

  A car door slammed outside followed by footsteps crunching the gravel and shuffling up the brick steps. The doorbell rang, a ring-a-ling-a-ling like the old-timey telephone that once hung on the tackle-room wall, followed by the sound of my parents’ hushed voices as they made their way down the stairs from their bedroom. My heart pounded against my chest, and my pulse throbbed in my ear.

  I stepped into my slippers, grabbed my robe, and joined Ben who was already in position on the top step, elbows propped on knees, face buried in hands, waiting to hear what we both knew was coming. I pulled him close and hugged him tight as Detective Breton broke the news. I tried to wrap my mind around the details—the haunted boathouse; Emma’s skull bashed against a metal cleat; Ben, Thompson, and myself wanted at the station for questioning.

  Ben ran to his room and I followed him, holding him as he sobbed for the girl he once loved. My mother joined us a little while later and we sandwiched Ben between us, smothering him with kisses and cooing our sympathies in his ear. When the appropriate amount of time had passed and Ben’s tormented sobs had subsided, my mother repeated what she’d learned from the detectives.

  “Why Thompson?” I asked when she told me the detectives only needed to question the three of us, not Archer or Spotty.

  “Because apparently he’s your alibi,” my mother said to me. There was no need for her to state the obvious. Thompson could vouch for me during the overnight hours since he’d been sleeping beside me in my bed.

  “Did the detective say whether they’d gotten in touch with the Turners?” I asked.

  Lying flat on his back between us, Ben glanced at me and then quickly shifted his attention to Mom, waiting for her response.

  She nodded. “George has an alibi as well. His parents.”

  I swung my feet over the side of the bed and went to the window. An image of the footprints was burned in my mind, Emma’s last walk on earth. I wondered if she’d been in a hurry or taking her time, moving her hips back and forth in her sexy way.

  “There was only one set of footprints in the snow,” I said, turning back around to face my mother and my brother. “I don’t understand why that evidence doesn’t prove the innocence of everyone who slept in this house that night.”

  My mother stood to face me. “It’s the best evidence in your favor, no doubt about it. But according to the detectives, they still have some concerns about the two of you.” She ran her finger down the angry red scratch on my face. “But listen, I have some good news as well. Your father called Max Robinson yesterday and put him on notice. He’s on his way down here now, so let’s get moving. We need to get dressed and find something to eat.”

  Even though Ben and I had known Max Robinson for most of our lives, we’d only seen him once a year, on Christmas E
ve, when we were dressed in our party clothes. He was unprepared for the sight of our disheveled appearance in our jeans and sweatshirts.

  “Ben, you and Katherine need to go back upstairs and change.” Max pointed at Thompson, who was wearing nice corduroy pants and a cashmere sweater. “Put something on like this young man is wearing. And, Katherine, a dress please, maybe some tights, something that makes you look sweet.”

  Ben and I stared at him incredulously.

  As if reading our minds, Mr. Robinson said, “I know it may seem disrespectful to your friend to be worried about how you’re dressed after just learning of her death. But you need to put those thoughts aside for now. This will likely be the most important first impression you’ll ever make.”

  “But we’ve already met both detectives,” Ben argued.

  “And you’ll likely meet some more today.” When Ben turned reluctantly toward the stairs, Robinson added, “And don’t forget to shave.”

  I’d never given much thought to the difference in age between Thompson and me, but when he climbed in the front passenger seat of Mr. Robinson’s Yukon and began talking to him, man to man, about his concerns for our case, I felt like Ben and I were the children, relegated to the back seat for being naughty.

  We reached the main road and made a left-hand turn towards White Stone. “Tell me about the haunted boathouse,” Mr. Robinson said to Ben and me through his rearview mirror.

  Ben nodded at me, his sad eyes pleading for me to do the talking.

  “Well . . . “—I thought back to the legend I’d heard dozens of times during my life—“a long time ago, way before we were born, a local fisherman’s wife lost her husband to a storm out in the Chesapeake Bay. For years afterward, the neighbors reported hearing sobbing coming from the boathouse on stormy nights. Which of course was the wife calling to him to come home. Tragically, the woman was killed when her house was struck by lightning and burned to the ground while she was sleeping.”