In the Waning Light

by Loreth Anne White

  She thought of Lee Albies and her homeless witness who’d seen a red van parked on the spit the day Sherry died, but had never reported it to the police.

  Ryan had made a sworn statement to the cops that he was with Tommy from 10:00 a.m. until 11:00 p.m., working in his father’s garage. And this photo was taken two years after Sherry’s murder. The question was: Had he or someone in that house owned the red van two years earlier?

  Her phone buzzed. Meg jumped and scrabbled in her tote as the old man two desks down scowled. Text from Blake. He was waiting outside already—she’d completely lost track of time. Quickly she looked up Ryan Millar’s garage phone number, jotted it down, gathered her things, and hurried out of the library, mentally running through what she might talk about at the bookstore.

  They’d been too late to stop for lunch, so they grabbed sandwiches and ate them en route to fetch Irene at Chestnut Place. Between bites, Meg explained to Blake what she’d found in the archives, and she dialed Millar’s Garage. She got through to the main number, and an assistant gave her Ryan’s direct line. She punched the number into her phone.

  “Millar.”

  “Ryan, hi, it’s Meg Brogan. I was wondering if I could come around and—”

  “You can fuck off, that’s what. Digging up shit like this, you and Sutton.”

  Meg blinked and cast a glance at Blake, raising a brow. “Just one question via phone, then, if I might, Ryan.” She quickly activated the record app on her phone.

  “Did you ever own a red VW van?”

  A beat of silence. “What?”

  “Did you, or anyone in your family own a red Volkswagen van twenty to twenty-two years ago?”

  “What in the hell is this about?”

  “It’s an easy yes or no.”

  “We’ve been through tons of vehicles over the last decades. Probably refurbished and resold a couple of Volkswagens.”

  “Were you with Tommy the entire day on August 11, the day of Sherry’s murder? You didn’t leave the gas station at all?”

  “What is it with you? You want to make a shitload of money making shit up, is that it? I was with Tommy in my dad’s garage working on his truck. All. Day. Got it?”

  The phone went dead.

  Meg whistled softly. “He’s a bit of a rough one. He wouldn’t commit to owning a red VW. But he didn’t deny it, either.”

  “What do you think?” Blake said, delivering the last bite of his sandwich to his mouth and reaching for his coffee in the mug holder.

  She glanced out the window. Trees were bending under the mounting wind. The radio was on low, the hosts chattering about the storms that were powering toward shore. Thunder grumbled. Meg wondered if the weather would hold long enough for Tommy’s fund-raising and birthday bash.

  “Old VWs are common enough,” she said. “And they were even more so back then—cheap and easy vehicles for kids to buy secondhand and make road trips down the coast in. Surfers loved them. The one parked at the spit might not have even been local. Could have been anyone traveling up or down the coast—no one saw plates.”

  Blake turned into the Chestnut Place property. “Millar always had a bit of a rep at school, among the guys.”

  “What kind of a rep?”

  “Coming on strong, not just on the field, but off, and with girls. There was a girl with a black eye once. And there was a rumor he got a bit rough during sex. People sort of swept it under the carpet.”

  “A misogynist?”

  Blake snorted as he drew to a stop at the entrance to Chestnut Place. “Wasn’t in my lexicon back in the day. I just hated his guts. We had it out twice.” A wry smile pulled his mouth. “Ryan got the upper hand both times. That was back then. He’s gone soft around the gut now. Bet he couldn’t run a mile these days.”

  “He’s the father of the kid who Noah hit?”

  “Yeah.”

  Meg grinned, and couldn’t help saying it. “Good for Noah.”

  He laughed. “Oh, look, Irene’s all ready and waiting.”

  And so she was, standing in the doorway, her purse held neatly in front of her. Meg’s heart squeezed with affection as she opened the door and went to collect the woman who’d raised her.

  CHAPTER 23

  The Mystery Bookstore was warm and comforting inside, just as Meg remembered, her little Dickensian getaway from the chill winters of her youth. Memories rose rich inside her as she entered, stirred to life by the familiar scent of books both new and secondhand. Inside this place her imagination had run wild, and the old owner, long gone, had indulged her, allowing Meg to sit in an overstuffed chair, reading in the back corner of the store for hours. In this place she’d imagined herself as Little Nell in her curiosity shop of odds and ends, or Tiny Tim looking in through frosted glass panes. She’d been a princess on a dragon, and an Asian warrior on wild horses. She tried to unravel mysteries along with her favorite female sleuths, crashed into snowy mountains in her airplane, and held her breath as characters escaped man-eating tribes in the darkest of Indonesian jungles. And it struck her just how profoundly she’d been shaped by the stories she’d found between pages here. How, in so many ways, those stories had influenced her own writing today, and the tales she selected to tell.

  Rose had the electric fireplace going, and chairs had been positioned in a semicircle around the armchair that was earmarked for her. Irene, of course, made a beeline for the cakes on the table, and while they waited for everyone to arrive, Meg and Blake perused the shelves, and the Shelter Bay memorabilia and old photos on the walls.

  “Oh, look. I remember that day,” Meg said, going closer to an old color photograph of children on a rope swing above a gorge. She grinned and pointed to a pale, knobby-kneed girl with wet red hair. “That must have been in the fourth grade, when we went for a class trip to swim up at the falls.” Her pulse suddenly quickened. “And there’s Mr. Thibodeau’s old van.”

  “It’s a red VW,” Blake said, quietly. Meg shot him a look. His features were tight.

  “Mr. Tibbo?” she said, her gaze going to Rose, who was rearranging the chairs and greeting her book club members. “How could Tibbo have had anything to do with Sherry? Besides, this was taken years before Sherry’s murder. And what about the similar-looking van parked outside Ryan Millar’s house?”

  “That Millar house photo was taken two years after Sherry’s murder, you said. Plus, as you mentioned, the van that the witness saw could have been a tourist van traveling the coast. We have nothing solid without plates.” He scowled as he studied the photo closer, a distant look entering his eyes.

  “What are you thinking, Blake?”

  “Nothing. It’s nothing.” He turned away.

  A dark feeling sank through Meg. Something in particular about this photo was worrying him. But before she could press, Rose came bustling over.

  “I think they’re all here,” Rose said. But she looked fussed, her cheeks oddly flushed.

  “Is something wrong?” Meg said, her gaze flicking to Blake, who was now leaning forward to more closely examine the photo with Mr. Tibbo’s van.

  “No, no. It’s …” She absently worried the pearls at her neck. “It’s just that Henry was supposed to bring Lori-Beth today. LB never skips a meeting. But Henry is missing.”

  “Missing?”

  “Well, not missing missing. But I … I shouldn’t even be worrying you with this, Meg. Come. Let’s go meet the gang. They’re all seated.”

  But Meg held back, thinking of LB’s connection to Sally Braden. “No, tell me, Rose, please.”

  Rose heaved out a sigh. “It sounds like a marital tiff. Things have been a bit stressed with the new baby on the way, and last night Henry booked into a motel. Now LB can’t locate him. It’s probably all fine.” She smiled, but it was strained. “These things happen over the course of one’s married life. Now, let me introduce you.”

  The talk and reading went well. Meg operated from rote, and was glad for all the interviews and readings she’d do
ne in the run-up to the launch of Sins Not Forgotten, because her mind was busy racing off in other directions.

  But as she opened the floor for questions, the ground began to shake. Books toppled from shelves, and teacups on the table rattled.

  Blake, who’d been sitting in a chair off to the side, surged to his feet. “Everyone outside,” he barked, taking Meg’s arm and then Irene’s as a freestanding shelf toppled to the ground with a crash. He ushered everyone out.

  By the time they were all gathered on the sidewalk, huddled against the icy wind, people from other stores down the road also outside and looking around in confusion, the tremor had stopped. A siren wailed in the distance, and a car alarm shrilled. While they waited to see if it was all safe before going back inside, Blake checked his phone for details of the quake while the others circled Meg and took the opportunity to pepper her with questions about the book, her writing habits, and how she tackled research.

  “You don’t look much like your publicity photo, dear,” said a woman in her late sixties. “You’re far more approachable-looking in person.”

  Meg laughed. The wind tossed hair over her face, and she held it back. “I don’t feel much like that person in that photo right now, either,” she said with a smile.

  “We’ve all heard that you’re writing a book on your sister’s murder,” the woman added. “Will you tackle a personal story in the same fashion as your others?”

  “That’s the plan.”

  “Some people are not too happy about your digging up those terrible memories again,” said another woman, her tone not quite as amicable as the previous questioner. “It could be bad publicity for Shelter Bay.”

  “In my experience, the publicity that comes from true crime books, oddly, is positive for the various communities involved. It’s also been cathartic for all involved, in the end.”

  “Are you ever afraid?” asked another club member. “That one of those bad guys will come after you when he gets out?”

  “I suppose that concern always lurks in the mind of a true crime writer, but as my mentor Day Rigby always says, the question is not whether you are in danger, it’s whether you choose to worry about it. It’s like swimming in the sea where there are sharks. You know they’re there, but your choice is whether you allow your fear of them to stop you from ever going in. Sure, you take precautions, and you don’t swim when there’s a sighting, but you also don’t let it stop you from reaching your goal, or the shore on the other side.”

  “Do you believe in evil, Meg? As a force external to man?”

  “Like the devil?”

  “Yes. Or a force that can inhabit people. Turn them into monsters.”

  “It’s an interesting question. Mostly I take the Jungian view that we create the idea of monsters in order to externalize the bad that potentially lurks within us all, and we call this monster a devil, or beast, so we can examine it objectively, without having to see the beast in our own eyes when we look into the mirror.”

  There were murmurs—some of dissent, others of agreement.

  “Does writing these stories, interviewing all these criminals, listening to victims over and over again, make you jaded in the end?” a man in his forties asked.

  “I think, in doing these stories, it has made me far more aware of victims’ rights, and feelings. I’ve come to believe that the mass of humanity is generally good. For every conscienceless killer I research, I find several dozen heroes—detectives, prosecutors, witnesses who testify even when they are frightened. With the cases I’ve tackled, the heroes did win in the end. It gives me faith, because these heroes are real. And I think this is the appeal of the genre.”

  Once back inside the building, Rose suggested they wrap things up. She looked rattled, and had a store to clean up. Blake offered to stay and help, but Rose declined, saying her husband, Albert, was on the way with some heavy lifters.

  Blake hesitated before leaving and said, “That old VW van of Albert’s, in that photo on the wall, whatever happened to it?”

  Rose, preoccupied with the mess in her store and the disruption of her book club meeting, looked momentarily confused. “Oh, yes, that van. We let Henry have it. It was on its last legs by the time we gave him the keys. He pretty much ran it into the ground during his last year of school.” She frowned. “Why do you ask?”

  “Just wondering.”

  As they exited the store with Irene, Meg and Blake exchanged a quick glance. Outside, a chill wind whipped in a new direction. Street banners snapped. Thunder grumbled in the distance.

  “Henry?” she said. “I’m going to need to talk to him.”

  “Except, he’s missing.”

  “That was fun,” Irene said as they neared Chestnut Place. Meg had offered her aunt the front seat, but she’d said she preferred the back. “Even with the earth tremor. I remember tremors like that back in the seventies. They came one after the other over a period of a few days, and then there was a big one. Not big enough to bring down buildings, mind you, but it did leave cracks in walls, and lowlying properties along the bay and beachfront were flooded by a small tsunami surge.”

  “I’m glad you enjoyed it, Irene. It really was a pleasure to have you there.”

  “Rose always has nice cake.” Irene smiled. “Your mother and father would have been proud, Meg. And I’m so happy for Rose that Henry and his wife are starting a family. Must make her and Al Tibbo so happy. Both came from big families themselves, you know.” She sat silent a while as they ferried her home. “And there Rose had once worried that her son might be a homosexual.”

  Blake’s eyes flashed up into the rearview mirror. Meg turned around in her seat.

  “Henry?” Meg said.

  Irene frowned. She began to scratch her arm. “Rose confided in me once … I think. Back when I was still working as a public health nurse.” Her frown deepened. She scratched harder. “I’m probably not supposed to mention it. But it doesn’t matter now, does it? Because Rose’s fears were clearly unfounded with Henry being happily married for so long now. And a baby on the way.”

  “It’s okay, Irene,” Meg said, reaching into the back to still her aunt’s hand.

  Blake’s shoulders tensed. His mind shot to the photo he’d found in the mariner’s chest in the shed last night. Henry was in it. It must have been his VW van. He thought about Geoff meeting a mystery boyfriend on the spit the day that Sherry was killed. Was Henry the one? Had he gone to meet Geoff, and parked his red van on the spit where the old vet living in his car had seen it?

  One more day …

  Almost as soon as they drove out of the Chestnut Place gates after dropping Irene off, Meg turned in the passenger seat to face him. “What’s worrying you—what are you thinking?”

  Blake cleared the thickness from his throat. “I suppose it could have been Henry parked on the spit that day.”

  She rubbed her brow. “Yeah, or a tourist. Or Ryan Millar’s van. Without any more information, or the van’s registration, it doesn’t actually prove anything.”

  Urgency pounded though Blake. He fisted the wheel. He had to get back to the marina, stat. He had to find Geoff, have it out with him. This was where it ended. Right here. This was the line in the sand.

  The radio announcer was talking about a small earthquake epicentered several miles offshore. It had caused tremors up and down the coast, but no serious damage. There was the usual chatter about foreshocks and aftershocks and “big ones” and possible alerts from the tsunami watch center. Blake felt like the earth’s crust himself—he was being shattered by his own thoughts, fears about his own brother. And what Geoff might have done. And what it could all do to his tentatively blossoming relationship with Meg now.

  “Are you okay, Blake?”

  He changed the subject. “We won’t have long at Forest Lane if we’re to pick Noah up from art class and still get to Tommy’s function by six thirty. We’ll just have a quick look, then run by the school, and then head straight back to the marina. I
need to see that Geoff is there. So that he can watch Noah tonight.”

  “And I need to pick up some clothes, something to wear tonight. Unless I go in old jeans.” She turned to look out the window. “Maybe my mom has something in her closet.”

  His stomach bottomed out. Meg sensed he was withholding something; it was written all over her body language. He could hear it in her voice. He cursed. She’d taken off that ring. He was so close, yet with every second now he could feel the ground pulling apart between them.

  Tonight, he told himself, he’d tell her everything tonight, as soon as he’d had it out with Geoff. If Geoff was clean, he’d have done as he’d promised. He’d have spoken with Henry—if that’s in fact who he’d been meeting that day—and he’d have warned Henry that he was going to reveal he was on the spit that night, meeting someone.

  And if Geoff was clean, he should have no trouble then sharing all of this with Meg. And explaining the red van.

  Meg stared, dumbfounded, at her house as Blake pulled into her driveway and drew to a stop. The windows had all been replaced. The blood graffiti had been washed off and the walls repainted.

  “What the … ?” Meg flung open the door, and jumped down. Digging in her tote for her keys, she made rapidly for the front entrance.

  She unlocked the door, stepped in. Blake followed. A clean lemony scent greeted them. The broken glass had been cleared away, the carpets vacuumed. Fresh flowers smiled from a vase on the dining table. Beneath the vase was an envelope.

  Meg ripped it open, and glanced up at Blake. “It says, courtesy of Kessinger Restoration Services.”

  “Tommy’s guys,” Blake said.

  “Why would he do this?”

  “Well, you’re the one who said he’s practically family.”

  She eyed him. “If I didn’t know better, Mr. Sutton, I’d say you were jealous.”

  His features tensed, and his eyes grew dark. She swallowed. He stepped forward, grabbed her shoulders, and kissed her hard, backing her up against the wall. “Maybe I am, Meggie Brogan,” he murmured over her mouth, his hand sliding down her back, and cupping her buttocks. Heat arrowed instantly into her groin. She was turned on by his rough and sudden intensity. “Shall we christen these nice clean carpets?” he whispered, his mouth moving down her neck, down to the vee in her shirt. Her nipples contracted.