by Geonn Cannon
The curtains were open and the Sound looked like a vast emptiness beyond the lights of the city. It felt like she was on the edge of a chasm and the slightest breeze might knock them all in.
She shook off that dread and stripped as she went into the bathroom to shower off her sweat. She always took off her bracelet when she showered, but this time she truly wasn’t sure if she would put it back on afterward. She closed her eyes, turned off her brain, and let the water hit her in the face. She’d read most of the essays in the book by now. Magnusson talked about the way wolves hunted, how they could remain hidden among ‘normal humans’ while using them as cattle. “Wolves are only cannibals if one views them as human,” Magnusson wrote, “so one must make a decision regarding their classification. Whatever decision is ultimately made, however, they must be considered as less than human.”
The woman she loved wasn’t human. She was a descendent of a long line of beasts, cannibals, monsters.
“Ow ow ow...” Dale leaned hard against the fridge, face contorted in pain.
Ari hurried into the kitchen. “What’s wrong, what happened?”
“Cramp. Leg cramp...”
“Poor thing.” Ari crouched and pushed up Dale’s pants, kneading the tight muscle. Dale grunted and put one hand on the counter for balance. “Any better?”
“Lots better. Thank you.”
Ari smiled up at her. “I think this makes us even.”
Dale laughed and tapped the top of Ari’s head with her fingers. “If you’re talking about massages, I think the score stands at five thousand to, hm, three?”
“I’ve given you more than three massages!”
“Hm, must not have been very memorable...”
Ari stood and wrapped her arms around Dale. “C’mere, I’ll show you memorable...”
Dale laughed and let herself be hauled into the bedroom.
She cupped her hands under the water and brought them up to her face, ran her hands through her hair, threading it through her fingers. The essays were a gross generalization of an entire species, but it was based on facts. She knew wolves sometimes attacked humans. She knew there were bad wolves, evil wolves, but Ari and Milo and Gwen, the British pack, they were all good. Right? Did she know that for a fact? Could she swear that Milo and her packmates had never killed a person?
But speciesism wasn’t the same as racism. She would run away from any lion she happened to see, even if someone claimed it was a “good” lion.
On top of it all, she still loved Ari. She’d had an ache in her chest all day that she knew could be eradicated by a single hug, or touching Ari’s hand. She knew she was causing Ari pain, and that pained her in turn. It would be so much easier if her newfound hate had also drowned the love she felt for Ari, because now she had all these conflicting feelings spilling in her gut like a whirlpool.
She turned off the shower and pushed the fogged glass door open. She retrieved her towel with one hand while she gripped the handrail with the other as she stepped over the lip of the stall. She paused and looked down at the steel bar. It was a safety feature, but it was also an aid for handicapped visitors to get in and out of the tub. A thought occurred to her, just a spark, a question rising up from the back of her mind that related to Ari’s case.
Dale wrapped the towel around herself and hurried, still dripping, into the bedroom. She grabbed her phone and hesitated with her finger over the screen. Her idea might be nothing. It might not help the case at all, and if it was just a dumb passing thought, she didn’t want to give Ari false hope by starting a conversation with her. She remembered earlier, Ari’s accidental call. She’d been so torn about answering. Part of her had thought about sending it to voicemail and blocking the number, but she’d eventually answered. And now, here she was again, considering another call.
She pressed her lips together, fingers curled to prevent any of them from flicking out to hit the screen.
###
Ari jumped when her phone rang, its screen brightening up the whole office. She fumbled with it, then stared in confusion and wary hope at Dale’s picture. She swept her thumb across the smiling portrait and closed her eyes.
“Dale?”
“Stairlift.”
The call disconnected. Ari blinked in confusion. “Dale...? Hello?” She looked at the screen even though she’d heard the click. “Stairlift? What the hell does that mean?”
She wiped her face and squeezed her eyes shut. She was still groggy and half-asleep. Maybe she’d misheard. Airlift? Stare... She shook her head and stood up. The office was dark but she could see the outline of the case board. She put it together then.
“Oh, stairlift.”
Vivian had a stairlift. But why bring it up now? She’d only seen it when she visited the first time, and it was gone the next time she--
Ari stiffened and blinked. “Oh. Stairlift.”
She ran to the light switch and slapped it on, then looked at the board again. She felt wide awake now, and furious at herself for not thinking about it earlier. Vivian had a stairlift installed in her house. It was a large model, big and sturdy enough to carry her entire chair up to the second story. It had been gone when she arrived to the will reading. She just assumed it had been removed by Timothy or the kids, or maybe Vivian had returned it to whatever medical company she’d gotten it from since she wouldn’t need it anymore.
The point was that Crossing-Over Place wasn’t the only thing that had vanished from the house following Vivian’s death. The stairlift was also missing. It was big and bulky enough that whatever was used to take it from the house would also be able to conceal a tapestry if it was folded right.
Ari grinned, though her eyes were wet with tears. “I love you, Dale. I really freaking love you.”
She went to the computer and booted it up. She knew Dale would have said something if she’d seen the medical company removing the stairlift, but she wanted to look for herself. If didn’t mean anything if Fitz’s cameras hadn’t seen anything because of how piecemeal his coverage was. But if the stairlift’s removal wasn’t on Vivian’s cameras, then it could only mean one of two things: Vivian had it removed before she died, or it was taken out afterward and the footage was deleted.
Either way, answering the question would solve a very big piece of the mystery.
###
“I hope you don’t mind me saying this,” Timothy said as he took a seat behind his desk, “but you’re looking very tired today, Miss Willow.”
Ari smiled. “Normally I would assume that was sexist, but I only got an hour of sleep last night and you actually seem concerned. So for that, plus the fact you were willing to come in on a Sunday, I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt.”
“I hope you’re not losing sleep over this case. The family has made it clear that they aren’t overly concerned about the tapestry’s whereabouts. The museum will be a little disappointed, I’m sure, but in the end it seems like a mystery that might never be solved.”
“Maybe,” Ari said. “But I like to be absolutely sure before I throw in the towel. Especially with something this historic. Not to mention the money involved.”
“Mm,” Timothy said.
“I was wondering if you could clarify the timeline for me. Vivian decided to end her life on Sunday night. Exactly a week ago, actually. She called a service who came to pick her up. She left the house and went to Emerald Care.”
He held up a finger. “Yes, about that. Elizabeth Burroughs left me a message last night. She called the clinic and received confirmation that Vivian passed away peacefully at seven-seventeen last Sunday. She has all the documentation from the clinic and the crematorium if you would like to see them.”
“I would, thanks. I’ll give her a call when I leave. But that’s not why I’m here right now. I want to know more about the time between Vivian’s death and the reading of the will on Wednesday morning.”
“Okay. I will help out however I can.”
Ari said, “The stairlift at the house. What hap
pened to it?”
“Vivian bought that from a medical equipment company. She donated it to a charity in case there was anyone who might be in need but couldn’t afford it new. The company was...” He furrowed his brow and turned to the computer, tapping a few keys until he found the appropriate part of the file. “Ah, here it is. Columbia Care. This says they sent out an associate on Monday evening. They dismantled the stairlift and removed it from the home.”
“Here’s the thing, Mr. Dodd,” Ari said. “I have security camera footage from Vivian’s house. The front door camera. I looked at the footage from Monday night. Actually I’ve looked at the footage from Sunday to Wednesday. I really wish I had asked you to narrow it down before I did that, but like you pointed out, I’m sleep deprived. There’s no footage of the stairlift being removed.”
Timothy said, “That is rather odd. Perhaps Vivian’s camera suffered the same glitch as the cameras on Mr. Anstartz’s property.”
She shook her head. “I thought the same thing, so I kept an eye on the time code. It recorded the whole day, no gaps. Definitely nothing long enough for a medical service to park, uninstall a stairlift, and get it out of the house. Well, I misspoke. It recorded without gaps for most days. Monday was the only one missing a two hour window.”
“That’s an unusual error.”
“Very unusual,” Ari said. “So I got to thinking... what are the odds that Vivian’s camera would crap out for just long enough to miss the medical company’s visit? And what are the odds that Fitz Anstartz would have the exact same blind spot on his footage? I’m not going to say it’s impossible, but it’s definitely very unlikely. It would have to have been done deliberately by someone who wanted to conceal the lift being taken out of the house.”
Timothy said, “So someone would either have to know when Mr. Anstartz’s camera wasn’t recording, or ask him to delete the relevant portion of the tape. That’s dangerously close to a conspiracy theory, Miss Willow.”
She nodded. “I know, right? I actually thought the same thing when I first came up with it. But you know... Elizabeth told me that Fitz was extremely eager to please. And he’s a gamer. So I think if someone approached him the right way, if they told him it was part of a game, he might go along with it. He might delete the footage, and lie to a private investigator about it. Because, see, I thought it was odd that he knew his security footage was sketchy but he still offered it up to me. He didn’t mention a thing about missing time, he just gave me a file and wished me the best. Why would he do that? He knew what was at risk, because of the slip-and-fall case he fouled up.”
“Perhaps he thought the system had... corrected itself.”
Ari smiled. “Or he was told to. Come on, Mr. Dodd. He described you pretty well when I ran all this by him this morning.”
Timothy lowered his head and then pivoted to look out the window. Ari waited. Finally, he started talking.
“She didn’t know you nearly as well as she knew her kids. She expected you to focus on the people and ignore the tapestry. She knew her children didn’t care about it. But she also knew that she’d burned many bridges with them over the years, too many to mend in the time she had left. She had alienated Eleanor and Elizabeth so completely that she doubted they would ever find it in their hearts to forgive her. And if they did, would it mean anything now? At the end of her life? It would be forgiveness for the sake of closure. So she brought them together. She reiterated every awful thing she’d ever said to Elizabeth about her sexuality, and she withheld the locket heirloom from Eleanor. She did it to bring them together, to unite them.”
“Vivian destroyed her relationship with two of her daughters?”
Timothy said, “Vivian had spent a lifetime destroying those relationships. She was merely acknowledging that it could never be repaired. She brought the girls together so they would have each other. Elizabeth and Eleanor had so much in common, and yet hadn’t spoken in years. They’re closer now.”
“That’s pretty cold,” Ari said.
He shrugged. “It was Vivian’s idea of making amends. It was the best she could hope for in the time she had left.”
“How’d she make amends with Preston and Evelyn?”
“With Preston, she made amends by telling his landlord to evict him. Mr. Favaloro was willing to give him a little extra time, like always, but Vivian knew when her house would be empty and she knew Preston would break in. He would have a roof over his head but he would also see the consequences of how he’d been living these past few years. And, of course, a week later she knew he would have the house. She wanted him to suffer just enough to change his ways. Hopefully. Whether that was successful remains to be seen, but I am hopeful.”
Ari said, “And Evelyn?”
He raised an eyebrow and held his hands up. “Actually, Vivian had no regrets when it came to Evelyn. She was intelligent, she knew the value of a dollar, and she was happy with her life. Vivian thought Evelyn’s only real problem was being estranged from her family. She hoped by bringing them all together for this spectacle would take care of that problem.”
“Okay.” Ari furrowed her brow. “So this whole thing was a plot Vivian concocted to bring her kids closer together.”
“She believed much of their unhappiness was due to her interference. She also believed that by being gone, they could be a family again. She paid me handsomely to sit back and watch it all unfold without interfering unless someone went off the rails. If Evelyn went home early, or if Eleanor abandoned the locket. There were contingency plans in place, but thankfully we didn’t have to use any of them. The Burroughs children acted precisely as she expected them to.”
Ari said, “Okay. Fine. So the fake tapestry, the disappearance, it was just to keep me asking questions? Force the kids together?”
“Not exactly.” He drummed his fingers on the desk. “I’m not supposed to tell you this next bit until Tuesday...”
She closed her eyes and counted to ten. Finally she opened her eyes, looked out his window, and saw the water reflected off the building next door.
“Mr. Dodd, with all due respect to Vivian’s wishes, I don’t give a damn. My personal life is exploding, and I would much rather be dealing with that instead of letting a dead woman lead me around on some wild goose chase. I don’t want to go digging through storage units or wait for you to dole out some piece of information. I’m not in the mood for a treasure hunt. So why don’t we just pretend I have a time machine?”
He smiled apologetically. “You’ve already figured out the fake tapestry was smuggled out of the house in the stairlift. Vivian concealed it in the packaging of the lift. You were also correct about your purpose in this scenario. You provided testimony that Crossing-Over Place was hanging in the Burroughs house on a certain date, safe behind a locked door. In truth, it was removed from the house two weeks after Vivian’s diagnosis.”
“And it’s... where? The storage unit? Already at the museum?”
“No, not yet. On Tuesday, I was going to contact you with a file I had allegedly just discovered. A file with the name of someone who was to be added to Vivian’s will.”
Ari raised an eyebrow. “Well, don’t leave me in suspense, Mr. Dodd. What’s the name?”
“Megan Garfield. She’s a schoolteacher in Pigeon Point. You were going to track her down and ask her some questions to determine why Vivian would leave her anything. You would discover that Megan Garfield was found abandoned outside a fire department as an infant. A little more digging, and you would find evidence that Megan was Vivian’s first child. Born of an affair, abandoned to prevent scandal or divorce. Vivian believed that the woman who wouldn’t let Laura Gavin die with a bad reputation would also do everything in her power to ensure Megan received her birthright.”
“Vivian had a secret child?”
“No.”
Ari narrowed her eyes, then sank back into the chair as she realized. “Vivian faked having a secret child.”
“Vivian had a regret. Just
like her regrets about Elizabeth and Eleanor and Preston. Megan Garfield was her attempt to correct that.”
Ari said, “The family name.”
Timothy nodded so slowly it was almost a bow. “Megan Garfield has two daughters. When all was said and done, she would officially change her name to Burroughs. The line would continue.”
“Okay,” Ari said. “And Crossing-Over Place... I assume the fake would eventually be found.”
“You were on the right track. And very close. It’s in the storage unit.”
“Damn,” Ari hissed. “I was right there.”
Timothy shrugged. “Don’t feel too bad. She made sure she hid it well.”
Ari said, “So I find the tapestry. Take it to the museum. They verify it’s fake. And Megan reveals she has a tapestry that looks a lot like it.”
“It’s verified as real, thus solidifying Megan’s claim as a member of the Burroughs family.”
Ari took a deep breath and let it out slowly. She leaned forward and rested her arms on her elbows. “And how would you explain the fake vanishing from the house?”
“We would say Vivian knew it would be discovered as a fake and hid it, ashamed.”
“How did Megan get the original?”
Timothy started to answer, then tilted his head. “In actuality, or the story we would give?”
“Either or.”
“In the story, Megan tracked Vivian down when she was eighteen. Vivian gave it to her to keep her quiet. In actuality, Vivian gave it to her as a down payment when she came up with this plan. Recompense and payment for going along with the lie. Megan would surrender Crossing-Over Place to the museum, she would be verified as a Burroughs, and she would receive her part of the inheritance. Two-hundred and fifty thousand dollars, just like every other Burroughs child.”
Ari shook her head. “That’s a long way to go to keep a name alive.”
Timothy said, “Vivian felt it was worthwhile. All the money she spent and the trouble she was going through, it was the cost of keeping the Burroughs name alive.”
“What about DNA?” Ari said. “Surely someone, somewhere along the line would suggest confirming Megan was Vivian’s daughter.”
