The Lost Girls of Devon

by Barbara O'Neal

  He swung the door open. “Sure. I just ordered some coffee. I’ll ask for another cup.”

  “None for me,” Sage said, pointing at the kettle. “I’d have a cup of tea, though.”

  Heavily, he nodded and stood in the middle of the room, as if he’d forgotten what he was doing. “Sit down, Henry,” I said, touching his shoulder. I flashed on his toothbrush in Diana’s bathroom, the sharply pressed shirts that hung in her wardrobe. “Sage can get his own water. I’ll call down for the cup, shall I?”

  He nodded wearily and sank down onto the bed, his hands open on his thighs, and slumped as if his grief were a heavy cloak.

  I called down for the extra coffee, and then thought to ask, “Have you eaten, Henry?”

  He waved a hand.

  “Bring a bowl of fruit and some toast too,” I said.

  “I’m gutted,” he said roughly, staring through the long windows that faced the sea. Mist ribboned along the balcony, moved in an unseen wind. For a moment it parted, and I saw the spire of Hyrne Rock. It reminded me of the smuggling aspects we’d talked about earlier.

  Could Diana somehow be connected to some kind of smuggling? It seemed far fetched, but at this point I was willing to consider any idea.

  A knock on the door announced the coffee. I opened the door, and a uniformed young man brought in a tray. I waited until he left and then poured a cup for Henry.

  We sat down. Sage said, “It’s a bloody awful thing, Henry. But maybe if we all compare notes, we can figure out what happened.”

  He nodded. “Whatever you like.”

  “When did you meet Diana?”

  “Last August. My usual caterer fell through for a big trip I’d worked on for months, and she stepped in. Brilliantly.”

  “How did you find her?” I asked.

  “Google. It was an emergency, and I was in London. She had good reviews, so I called her.”

  I remembered the job and how excited she’d been to land it. It was one of the few FaceTimes we’d shared before everything fell apart—or rather before I became the worst friend in the world. She’d been practically bouncing in her chair, the freckles across her nose more visible after a day of strawberry picking. I’d teased her a little about it, but she didn’t mind.

  Sage asked, “And you started dating her right away?”

  Tears welled in his eyes, and he used his thumbs to pinch them away. “She had the most dazzling smile. I’m so tired of women who put on airs and have to carry designer bags. She isn’t like that. She makes me laugh.” He paused. “I just liked her, that first day.”

  “She liked you too,” I said. “I have the texts to prove it.”

  He nodded, his head bowed, and I could see he was struggling. I gave Sage a look, and we busied ourselves with our cups for a moment. I watched the mist eddy and swirl, giving glimpses of a portion of the coast I hadn’t seen from my grandmother’s house. A lighthouse stood on a point, and farther on, I knew the cliffs curved around to another string of small villages.

  “Henry,” Sage said quietly. “Do you have any idea of something she might have stumbled on, some crime or something she shouldn’t have known about?”

  He shook his head, still bowed. “Like what?”

  “I don’t know,” Sage said, clearly frustrated. He flung up his hand, let it fall. “The girl on the beach this morning looks like a drug overdose, so maybe drugs? Gambling? Smuggling?”

  Henry raised his head. Coughed. “Not that I know of. They gamble, for certain. I’ve heard of some big pots, but these men—they can afford it.”

  “Who takes these trips?” I asked.

  “Businessmen, mostly, getting away from their wives and responsibilities, having a laugh for a long weekend.”

  “What kind of businessmen?”

  He shrugged, looked at the wall as if the answer were there. “Bankers. CEOs of all kinds, I reckon.”

  “Masters of the universe,” I said.

  He nodded. “I’m sure they’re not particularly nice fellows, all told, but they’re not smuggling. Why would they bother?”

  I frowned, examining his face carefully for signs of lying. As if I knew what those signs would be.

  I realized that I did think he was lying, however. An intuition, something that my body picked up that I didn’t know I was reading.

  Sage must have felt the same way, because he asked quietly, “Why did you immediately assume she was dead, Henry?”

  He started, visibly, and coffee sloshed out of his cup and over his fingers. He shook them off, and I handed him a napkin from the tea caddy. “What d’you mean?”

  “When we said she was missing, you immediately looked like you would die. Almost as if you were not surprised.”

  “That’s not true!” He looked shaken. “I was in love with her! Ask anyone.”

  “No one has met you in town. Not me, and I was one of her best friends,” Sage said. His persistence surprised me. “Why didn’t you make time for us?”

  “We had so little time together. No matter how I tried, I couldn’t get down here every weekend. It wasn’t personal. I just . . . wanted to be with her.”

  And then a tsunami of grief slammed him. He bent his head and began to weep. It made me like him more, that he was so lost without her, and I rested my hand at the top of his back, feeling an internal shiver, my own fear and grief, wanting outlet. Surely we all knew she was dead by now. I knew the reality would sink in at some point.

  The thought met a fierce resistance. No. I would not give up. Not yet.

  Sage ducked into the bathroom and brought back a snowy-white towel he then handed over to Henry. He cocked his head toward the door.

  “We’ll leave you alone, Henry,” I said. “I’m so sorry we bothered you.”

  He didn’t speak as we let ourselves out.

  In the hallway, I stopped halfway to the stairs and leaned against the wall, my heart aching as the sound of his tears followed us. “He’s wrecked,” I said.

  “He didn’t answer the question.” Sage leaned next to me, our arms just touching. “He knows something.”

  “Agreed. But what?”

  “I dunno.” He looked down at me. “Let’s go for a walk. I have an idea.”

  “Can we get some coffee first? I’m dying of cold and hunger.”

  One side of his mouth lifted. “Done.”

  A sense of history moved around us, a wash of air and time and ourselves, and I held his gaze.

  He lifted one hand and brushed a damp lock of hair out of my face. “You’re kind of a mess.”

  “Thank you.”

  “I missed you.” His hand touched mine, knuckles to knuckles.

  “Me too,” I said, and then I straightened, pulling away, putting myself in my place. “Coffee.”

  Chapter Thirty

  Zoe

  At the coffee shop while we waited in line, I texted Isabel and my grandmother to let them know I was still out walking. Neither replied, so it was safe to assume that Gran was lost in her work, and Isabel was still sleeping. Tucking the phone back in my pocket, I commented, “I’m the only lark in the family.”

  “Poppy is a lark,” he said.

  I narrowed my eyes. “She’s not my family.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous.” He stepped up to the counter and ordered muffins and coffee for both of us, glancing back to ask how I took it. “You might want to disown her, but genes will out.”

  “Whatever.” I twitched my shoulders as I went over to stand by the fogged-up window. The café was full, and I heard snippets of conversation here and there, most of it revolving around the body on the beach.

  Sage stood next to me, completely at ease, and said not a single word. Not to needle me, not to draw me out, not anything. I noticed that he was listening, too, and I focused on collecting whatever information we might learn like this.

  Approximately nothing. It was all speculation. We took our muffins and coffee and walked toward the playground, where he gestured for us to sit
on a bench that was beaded with water from the mist. I wiped it off with my sleeve and sat. “What’s your idea?”

  “Let’s play with scenarios, shall we?”

  “Okay.”

  “We have the fishing parties, which Diana started catering after she met her new boyfriend.”

  “Right.”

  “We have the dead girl on the beach, and I’m going to predict it’s drugs that killed her.”

  “Mmm.” I was starving, and the muffin was studded perfectly with big grains of brown sugar. There wasn’t much room in my mouth for talking.

  “Henry said they’re all out to have a good time, so drinking, gambling, fishing.” He peeled the paper from the muffin carefully. “But what if not all of the parties are fishing parties? What if some of them are not the—what did you call them? The masters of the universe—but something else? Drug traffickers or whatever.”

  “My gran thought maybe electronics, like cheap phones.”

  “Right. The actual goods are less important than the active smuggling. What if Diana found out somehow, and somebody killed her to hush her up?”

  “But how would we find that out?”

  He frowned, studying the cliff. “Surely she’d have left us some sort of clue. She documented everything.”

  I thought of the bedroom and wondered if she had a journal or diary somewhere. “She wouldn’t have been foolish enough to write down something like ‘I’m suspicious of the fishing party I just catered.’”

  “No, you’re right.” He took a bite of his muffin and brushed crumbs from his jeans. I found myself watching him chew. I noticed a scar high on his cheekbone that I didn’t recognize, and the length of his throat, and how smooth his jaw was this morning in comparison to the glitter of beard that had been there the other night.

  He looked at me. “What? Do I have crumbs?” He brushed his mouth.

  “No.” I wanted to touch the same path, his cheek and jaw, but more compelling was the sense that we’d done something very stupid all these years. “How did we let all that time go by without talking, Sage?”

  He shook his head. “We were so young back then. We thought we knew everything, didn’t we?”

  “Not me. I was pretty sure I didn’t know anything.” I kicked my feet out in front of me, moving them back and forth against the backdrop of misty sea, trying to make sure I didn’t say the wrong thing. I looked at him. “And after everything, I didn’t even stick with my art.”

  “Why didn’t you come back to Axestowe, instead of going to New Mexico?”

  “You know why. We broke up in such a bad way.”

  “But Woodhurst is your home.”

  I nodded. I thought of the apoplectic face of the teacher who’d hated me, the humiliation of the smirks of the other students, my own overwhelming sense of insecurity, and my terrible, terrible mistake. I couldn’t face Sage and Axestowe after that. “It’s a long story, and really not that interesting.”

  “It’s interesting to me,” he said quietly.

  I held up a hand, feeling more emotional than I would have expected. “I’m not sure I can talk about it, even now.”

  “You’re right.” I heard him take a breath, then let it go. “I’m sorry.” He took my hand. “We’re here now, right?”

  I looked up. Nodded.

  To my surprise, he lifted my hand and kissed the knuckles. “I’m sorry, Zoe. For all of it.”

  I didn’t trust myself to speak. All the things I wanted, all the things I’d lost, all the things that could have been welled up in my throat, and I just nodded.

  “Let’s go have another look at the ledger.”

  “All right.”

  In my pocket, my phone buzzed. “Sorry. I have to check.”

  “Of course.”

  It was from Isabel:

  Gigi is very agitated. She needs you. Poppy is still here, but she says she will go when you arrive.

  “Damn.” I texted back:

  Be right there.

  “I have to go. Gran is having an episode.”

  “Of course. Do you need help?”

  “No, thanks. Do you want to go over to Diana’s and maybe send me files so we can compare them side by side or something?”

  “Uh . . . sure.” He stood too.

  “That doesn’t sound sure.”

  He took a breath. “It’ll be hard to be in her house by myself.”

  I thought what it would be like to be in her house alone, with all the things she’d left behind waiting for her return. “I get it. We can go over later if you want.”

  “I’d prefer that. But I’ll head over to her business. Look through those files. Text me your email.”

  “Okay.” I started to turn away, then turned back. “Sage, I’m glad we’re talking again.”

  He nodded and gave me a sad smile.

  I avoided the climb down to the beach by walking along the high street and the bluff that marked the edge of town, walking as urgently as possible. I still had to climb down toward the town and then up the path toward Woodhurst, and from the top I could see a big knot of people down on the beach, swirling around the crime scene. I couldn’t tell if the body was still there, but it didn’t seem so.

  Poppy and Isabel were in the kitchen, with Mósí at Isabel’s feet, tail wrapped tidily around his paws. “Where’s Gran? Has she eaten this morning?” I hated seeing Poppy there with Isabel, looking so cozy, but I had to admit to a sneaking sense of relief too. It was much less terrifying to face whatever was happening if I wasn’t entirely on my own.

  “She wouldn’t eat,” Poppy said. She gave me a bottle of pills. “Try to get some protein in her if you can, and if she keeps getting more agitated, give her a Valium.”

  She smelled of lavender, and up close, I could see the lines around her eyes. Some dark thing moved through me, ran down my spine. In the distance, that keening sound rose, a lost girl pining for her mother. Shards of emotion stuck in my skin from head to toe, and I had to grab the pills and turn away. “Okay.” I swallowed. “Thanks for your help.”

  Light flickered over her face, and she raised a hand as if to pat my arm, but I shrank away. “Call if you need anything.”

  “Yep.”

  “She’s out in the garden.”

  My mother left. Isabel stood quietly nearby. I realized that she was wearing normal clothes, clothes appropriate for the climate and the area, and completely ordinary—a jumper over a turtleneck, jeans, boots. I hadn’t even realized that she’d packed them.

  What had wrought such a big change? My mother? A very nasty twist of jealousy squeezed away some of my happiness, and when I realized how ugly that was, I forced myself to ask in an even tone, “Are those my Doc Martens?”

  “Yeah.” She grinned, holding up a foot. “So cute. Is it okay?”

  Eyeing the well-worn oxblood boots, I felt a soft puff of nostalgia. “Yeah, they’re too small for me now. They look great on you.”

  “Thanks.” Even her hair was done, washed and calmed into beautiful ringlets with product. “I’m going out to shoot.”

  “Only shoot?”

  She lifted a shoulder. “I’m going to look for some of the people I met the other day. Is that okay? Molly texted me a while ago.”

  “Molly is . . . ?”

  “The girl I met a few days ago. I told you about her. She’s good.”

  I knew she’d been desperately lonely. “Okay. Be careful. And—”

  “Check in regularly. I know.” She shrugged into a puffy jacket the color of the shoes, tossed her camera bag over her shoulder, and tugged her hair out to freedom.

  I nodded. “You look great,” I said. “It’s nice to see my girl again.”

  “Thanks.” She lifted a hand as she headed for the front door, which was closer to the path to town.

  “Wait!” I called. “Stay clear of the beach. Something is going on.”

  “What?” she said, stopping.

  “They found a body. Someone drowned.”

&nb
sp; She frowned. “Diana?”

  “No. Not her, for sure. That’s all I know.”

  “Okay.”

  “Be careful.”

  “Mom!” Exasperated. “I’ve got it.”

  “Okay.”

  I found Gran in the garden, sitting on a stool so she could weed. She wore her dressing gown, and her hair had not been done. A little child part of me burst into tears, but I was perfectly calm as I sat down beside her on the grass. “Hello,” I said. “You must have been in a big hurry to get out to the garden.”

  “Oh, I couldn’t sleep all night. I just couldn’t be bothered.”

  “Have you eaten?”

  She paused, dirty fingers in the air. “I can’t remember.”

  “Are you hungry?”

  “No. I just want to get this bit done. I wish you’d stop nagging me. You’re worse than your father—both of you so needy. A body barely has a chance to take a breath.”

  At first I was taken aback. She didn’t speak to me with that tone—and . . .

  “My father?”

  “Stinks of cigars, chokes me out,” she muttered.

  My grandfather, whom I’d never met. I crossed my arms over my ribs, wondering what to do. And what we would need to do long term. We would have to find actual nurses, figure out some kind of plan to keep her safe.

  Her fine white hair stuck up, some of it pressed to her temple. A sense of painful tenderness made me lift a hand and smooth it down. The woman she’d always been would be horrified to be caught out so untidy. “What if I bring you something?”

  “Leave me alone!” she cried. “I just want to think!”

  It wounded me, even if she didn’t really mean it. For the moment, she was safe enough in the garden. She could wander off, I supposed, but not far, considering her frailty. I went in and made a pot of strong tea, arranged a plate of biscuits on a saucer, and then stuck my head back out the door. “Gran, would you like some tea? I’ve just made a pot.”

  By the way she startled, I realized that she’d fallen asleep. “What? What?”

  I hurried out. “Come inside,” I said gently. “I’ve just made some tea.”

  She stood willingly and then looked at her dressing gown. “Why am I outside in my gown?”

  I remembered what I’d read about dementia: just to stay kind and in the moment. “Well, it’s a lovely morning for weeding, isn’t it? I expect you were simply eager to get out here.”