The Girl in the Moss (Angie Pallorino Book 3)

by Loreth Anne White

  Emotion filled Angie’s eyes and made her heart hurt. She loved this kid. This kid who would be her stepdaughter if the marriage went ahead. Like Justice Jilly Monaghan had gotten a grown stepdaughter in Jasmine’s mother. Jilly Monaghan’s words whispered through her mind.

  Things happen for a reason, Angela. I firmly believe this. One needs to seize the opportunities where they present.

  Angie nodded. “Okay,” she said softly. “But it’s our secret, Ginn. Just in case things don’t work out.”

  Ginny smiled, a mischievous little glint entering her eyes. “Yes,” she whispered. “Our secret.”

  CHAPTER 24

  The cupcake bakery in Ladysmith was tiny, with two sets of round tables and chairs pushed up against a window that looked out into the mall parking lot. Behind the glass-fronted counter, a woman in her sixties was icing a batch of cupcakes.

  “Kathi Daly?” Angie said as she approached the counter.

  The woman glanced up briefly before returning to piping icing. “What can I do for you?”

  “I’m Angie Pallorino. We spoke on the phone.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Is there someplace we can talk for a minute?”

  “Talk away. If customers come in, you’ll have to take a back seat. I don’t have anyone to fill in for me right now.”

  Angie watched as Kathi finished her icing job. Confronted with silence, the woman was forced to look up again. Irritation tightened Kathi’s features, which were already pinched with the passage of time and a look of bitterness. Her harshly dyed blonde bob against a dulled complexion further aged the woman. In Kathi Daly’s case, the years had not been kind.

  “I don’t know why you bothered to come,” she said, laying down her icing bag and wiping her hands across her apron. “There’s nothing I can tell you in person that I couldn’t have done on the phone.”

  “I appreciate you seeing me,” Angie said. “I like to talk to people face-to-face.” That way I can tell a whole lot more about you, like whether you’re lying. Or hiding something. Or whether you’re just a bitter old crone …

  “I was wondering if you could walk me through what you remember from that last night in camp before Jasmine Gulati disappeared over the falls.”

  “Rachel said she told you what happened already.”

  “Did Rachel call and prep you?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Why would she do that?”

  Kathi snorted. “To tell me I was under no obligation to talk to a nosy PI. Because she didn’t want her friends to be bothered on her account. This was her trip, she organized it, and she feels bad that you’re snooping around interviewing everyone now. Looking for blame.”

  “Rachel said I was seeking to blame someone?”

  “Aren’t you? Isn’t that what high-and-mighty folk like Justice Monaghan always do—sue someone? Try to blame the organizers, or the guides, or—”

  “I’m only trying to answer some questions for a grieving grandmother, Kathi. That’s all. Justice Monaghan has questions about her granddaughter and what was happening in her life prior to the accident.”

  “Well, I’ll give you my angle straight, then. I didn’t like Jaz. I think a lot of people disliked her. She was an arrogant slut.”

  “Because she slept with one of the guides?”

  “He was married.”

  Angie crooked a brow. “From the film footage, you looked pretty interested in married Garrison Tollet yourself.”

  Kathi’s eyes narrowed sharply. She said nothing.

  “From what the others say, you and Jaz seemed to hit it off on the trip, spent time sharing drinks, talking around the fire.”

  “Drunks love company. That’s all it was.”

  “She ever tell you who gave her this ring?” Angie set the photo of Jasmine’s diamond cluster atop the counter. “Maybe Jaz mentioned a fiancé or significant other while you were having drunken tête-à-têtes around the campfire?”

  “You kidding? It was her big secret.”

  “She write about this secret in her journal?”

  “I have no idea. Look—”

  “Do you know what happened to that journal, Kathi? It had a purple cover. Here—” Angie laid on the counter the group photo that included Jasmine holding her journal. “She’s holding the book in this photo.”

  There was a flicker in Kathi’s eyes. “Wasn’t it with her things in her tent?”

  “No. It was missing.”

  She shrugged.

  Angie held the woman’s gaze. “Were you envious of Jasmine?”

  Kathi blinked at the blindside. Her faced reddened. “I’ll tell you what, when your husband runs off and fucks every young pussy that hits his radar and leaves you with four kids and no means of an income, you might also have issues with nubile young sluts, okay? Do you think I’d still be slaving away in this damn bakery at my age if he hadn’t left me in a shithole of debt? Hope that guide’s wife gave him hell—she came into the pub, you know? She saw him cozying up to that … that woman in a booth.”

  “I saw that on Rachel’s footage, yes. Do you know whether Garrison’s wife confronted him about it or spoke to Jaz about it at any point?”

  “I have no idea. I think his wife visited one of our campsites one evening. Brought food or something. I think it was the first or second camp. Can’t recall. If she did confront Jaz, I wasn’t there, because that I would have remembered.”

  “And your memory of that last night, the hours before Jaz died?”

  “All a blur. A nice alcoholic blur. Was my escape from the kids and my fucked-up life for a few blissful days until she went and drowned and ruined it all.”

  The bakery door opened, and two women entered.

  “If you don’t mind, I need to get back.” Kathi turned and addressed her customers.

  “Thanks,” Angie muttered more to herself than Kathi. She exited the cupcake shop and walked to her car, the coastal wind tearing at her hair. She felt like having a drink and finding some nice numb bliss herself just to get the bad taste of that woman out of her mouth. She opened her vehicle door, thinking she’d have been tempted to push Kathi Daly over Plunge Falls had she been on the trip. Angie hoped Rachel’s daughter, Eden, would be more cooperative when she met with her in Nanaimo, a small city just north of Ladysmith. But Angie had doubts given that Rachel was calling around and giving everyone a heads-up.

  As she drove to Nanaimo, rain began to spit against her windshield again, and a dark seed of thought unfurled inside her—she wouldn’t put it past bitter and jealous Kathi Daly to have pushed a “nubile slut” into the river.

  CHAPTER 25

  Dr. Eden Hart’s waiting room was empty when Angie entered. Pale-gray walls and large windows filled the interior with natural light despite the dark, moody weather outside. Freshly cut flowers in a vase on a coffee table provided additional cheer. Magazines were lined in neat rows atop the glass surface of the coffee table.

  A receptionist behind a counter at the far end of the room peered over the rims of her glasses.

  “I have an appointment with Dr. Hart,” Angie said as she approached the counter. “Name’s Angie Pallorino.”

  “The doctor is running a bit late. Please take a seat. Coffee is in the urn in the corner over there. Mugs are next to it.” She smiled. “The cookies are pecan and white chocolate today.”

  Angie sat, flicked briefly through a magazine, then turned her attention to the black-and-white prints on the walls. Some were historic photos, others ink sketches and block prints. With surprise Angie realized they all depicted women angling. Intrigued, she came to her feet and studied the first photo. It was signed by Lorian Hemingway. Angie presumed the woman standing proudly beside a swordfish that hung from a scale on a dock in some tropical locale must be one of Ernest Hemingway’s twelve grandchildren. Angie moved over to the next image. A block print of a nun in full habit casting a fishing line into the water. A quote beneath the print read:

  Si tibi deficiant
medici, medici tibi fiant. Hec tria, mens leta, labor, et moderata dieta.

  “If you fall short of doctors, physicians will be these three—the happy mind, work, and moderate diet,” said a female voice behind her.

  Startled, Angie swung around.

  A brunette of her own height and age stood right behind her—Angie hadn’t even heard her approach. She nodded toward the print. “Dame Juliana Berners, a prioress and noblewoman credited with writing the first fly-fishing essay. Ironic really, considering how long men have dominated the sport ever since.” She extended her hand. “Eden Hart.”

  “Angie Pallorino.” Angie took Dr. Hart’s hand. It was fine boned, her skin soft, nails impeccably manicured. But her grip was solid. Her gaze was equally firm.

  “It was in your mother’s VHS footage from the Hook and Gaffe pub,” Angie said. “The mention of the nun.”

  Eden smiled. “You’ve done research.”

  Angie laughed, recalling the clip of Trish explaining to Eden why she’d thank her mom for introducing her to fishing. “So your mother made an angler out of you yet?” she said.

  Eden’s smile did not falter, but something shifted ever so slightly in her laser-sharp gaze. Angie felt a small frisson. There was something enigmatic, forceful about this woman. Something in her smile that while warm and engaging did not seem reflected in her eyes. Her mother’s daughter.

  “It’s really good to meet you,” Eden said. “Although I do feel like I know you already, from your story in the news. I’m looking forward to reading Dr. Reinhold Grablowski’s upcoming book.”

  Angie winced. “It’s kind of the last thing I’m looking forward to anyone reading. He’s written it without my consent.”

  “I know. True crime is always fascinating to me. The psychological impact on you as a four-year-old victim, losing your twin as well as your mother, the repression of traumatic memory—it must be devastating still.”

  “A survivor,” Angie said crisply. “I’m not a victim. I’m a survivor.”

  The psychologist’s eyes held hers, and Angie felt suddenly as if she’d come to be interrogated by this woman rather than the other way around. Or that Eden was challenging her, laying down subtle lines in the sand.

  “Yes, of course,” Eden said softly. “A survivor. My apologies. Come on through.” She held her arm out toward the door. “I rescheduled my lunch-hour appointment so we can chat in peace.”

  At least that made a change from Kathi Daly.

  “My last patient left via the rear entrance,” she said as she showed Angie into a consulting room with comfortable-looking chairs and decor that was easy on the eyes. “Therapy can be an emotionally draining experience for my patients, and no one wants to exit through a waiting room full of people after sobbing their eyes out. This way—” She took Angie into a smaller office that led off the consulting room. Inside was a large desk. Bookshelves lined the walls. Eden shut the door behind them.

  The wall beside Eden’s desk was adorned with framed degrees, diplomas, medals. The glory wall, thought Angie as she stepped closer to read the inscriptions on some of the medals that hung from ribbons.

  “You’re a marathoner as well?”

  “I completed five. But I prefer the river or ocean to the road. Give me a kayak and a rod over pavement and running shoes any day.” She nodded at the medals. “But those races were to prove to myself I could actually go the distance if I put my mind to it. Many things in life are analogous to the marathon struggle. I use the metaphor a lot in therapy.”

  “These are your kids?” Angie said, moving to the next wall, which was hung with what appeared to be family photographs.

  “Two sons and a daughter, yes. I have a stay-at-home husband, or I don’t know how I’d manage.” Eden gestured to a leather chair. “Please, take a seat.”

  “Is this him, your husband?” Angie pointed to a photo of a balding male with a beard. The man looked soft in the face, a little flaccid in physique. Gentle eyes.

  “Yes. John Drysdale. I kept my own name for my practice since it’s how I qualified.”

  Angie briefly scanned the other images. There were at least seven photographs of Eden and her father at various stages in their lives. No images of Eden with her mother.

  Angie stopped at a fading print of a little towheaded boy on a tricycle.

  “Is this your brother, Jimmy?” Angie said.

  “It is. We lost him that holiday. It’s the last picture we have of him.”

  “I’m so sorry,” Angie said as she took the seat being offered her. “Your parents told me about him. It must have been traumatic. Maybe it still is,” she said, lobbing Eden’s earlier dig back at her.

  Eden gave a wry smile. “Touché. It is. Past trauma never really leaves you. You need to make room, a home for it, and learn to live with it and use it in positive ways.”

  Angie let that sink in because it was true. She was still trying to make a home for her past while at the same time forging a new way into the future, a new way to be.

  Eden took a seat opposite Angie and said, “The hardest, I suppose, was that my mother blames me in some ways for Jimmy’s death. I was supposed to be watching him, but I’d ventured off the dock to gather the blackberries I could see growing in brambles farther along the lakeshore. While I was picking berries, he went off the edge of the dock with his tricycle. By the time I heard the splash …” She fell silent, then inhaled slowly. “Guilt can be a terrible thing. I felt guilt for years. My mother still does, I think. Because she left me with Jimmy, and I was only nine at the time. My mother feels she shouldn’t have given me that responsibility at that age.”

  “What about your father?” Angie said with another glance at numerous dad-and-daughter pictures on the wall. “Was he at the lake that summer, too?”

  “He was busy marking papers in the lake house. It was my mother who should’ve been taking care of us—at least, that’s what she’d led my dad to believe she was doing so he could focus on his work. She left us alone often—she was a bad mother in that respect. It’s a miracle nothing happened to either of us before then.” Eden regarded Angie as if watching for a reaction from which she’d learn more about her visitor. But Angie kept her features studiously impassive. Again, she had a sense the head doc was messing with her mind, testing for something. Maybe that’s just what shrinks did.

  Eden crossed her stockinged legs and settled back into her chair. Her pumps, Angie noted, looked like they probably cost more than several months’ worth of her old MVPD detective’s salary. “My mother called to tell me you’d been to see her and that you took her uncut documentary footage. She explained what you were after. How can I help?”

  “I suppose she also advised that you were under no obligation to speak to me?”

  Eden grinned. “Of course she did. Which made me even more interested to meet you and hear you out.”

  Angie realized she was a chess piece in some ongoing power game that defined Dr. Eden Hart’s relationship with Rachel Hart, the famous outdoor documentary filmmaker and self-professed feminist. “What can you tell me of those last hours in the camp before Jasmine Gulati left to fish alone and before the guides screamed for help?”

  “My memory from the trip is spotty. I was only fourteen at the time, and a lot has transpired in my life since then. But I do recall snippets from the turning point events. Like our arrival in Port Ferris and, of course, the night Jaz went over the falls. We’d pulled the boats in for the evening and set up tents. The guides got the fire going. Then Jasmine left with her gear to go fishing. The guides departed shortly afterward to hunt for more wood. Then my mom left to shoot evening footage.”

  “Which way did your mother go?”

  She frowned. “I … don’t know. I can’t recall. I only remember her saying she was going to shoot while the evening light lasted. I went to relieve myself in the woods, but I didn’t see her anywhere. Is it important which way she went?”

  “Just trying to line up the chronology.
There’s some discrepancy in accounts. Plus, the VHS footage your mother shot that night has gone missing. Any idea where it might be?”

  “Me? Hell no. I never got close to her stuff. There’d have been death to pay.”

  “What happened next, after you went into the bush to relieve yourself?”

  “I returned to camp. It was getting dark. Cold. I went to sit by the fire, where the other women were having drinks and chatting about the day. Then we heard a man scream for help. We all got up and ran up to the logging road. We saw Jessie Carmanagh come racing down the road toward the camp. He said he needed the radio. He said Garrison Tollet had seen Jasmine going over the falls. Garrison was trying to climb down the cliff to the base of the falls to see if he could find her.”

  “Where was your mother at that point?”

  Eden looked up and to the left, thinking. “I don’t know. No … wait. She was there, I remember her there. On the road with everyone milling about in panic. I don’t know which way she’d come from. It was chaos. Jessie radioed for help. We all went downriver with flashlights to see if we could help, but Jessie ordered us back to camp, said he didn’t need anyone else falling in and that the cops and SAR would be arriving soon. When they arrived, they tried searching in the dark below the falls with hunting spotlights and then ramped up in the morning. But there was no sign of Jasmine.”

  Angie opened her sling bag and took out her folder. From the folder she extracted the image of the ring. Like the others, Eden said the same things—Jasmine acted like she had a big secret and had told no one who’d given it to her.

  “Jasmine wrote nightly in her journal,” Angie said. “Did she ever tell you what was in it?”

  “Another secret. She made like it was full of sexy stuff. Her way of messing with the heads and libidos of the male guides who couldn’t stop ogling her boobs and her ass and fussing about her.”

  “Jessie fussed about her, too?”

  “Everyone was agitated by Jaz in some way.” Eden uncrossed her legs and sat forward, an energy lighting her eyes. “As you’re well aware, Angie, given your professional involvement with lust killers during your tenure with sex crimes—Spencer Addams specifically—sex is often simply about power. Control. Ownership. In retrospect, that’s what Jaz was all about. Controlling others.”