But that was a longtime ago. A longtime ago.
She tried very hard to keep the expression on her face neutral and not show any emotion at all. She wasn’t sure she was succeeding.
She glanced at Al. His face had drained of color. She went to him, touched his arm. He was warm underneath his flannel shirt. Perspiration dotted his hairline. He scrunched and twisted the gloves in his hands. He worried about her probably more than he should.
“Maybe you should come back tomorrow,” she said to him. “The trees can wait.”
“I’d prefer it if you did,” Charlie said to him. “My men will be working outside as well as in. I don’t want you disturbing the grounds. In fact, it’s best you take the day off.”
“Are you sure?” Al asked Linnet.
She squeezed his arm. “It’s okay,” she said. “We have nothing to hide.” She made a point to glare at Charlie as she spoke.
“If you need me,” Al said to her. “You’ll call.” He looked torn between staying and running out of there.
“I’ll call if I need you.” She reassured him.
Both she and Charlie watched him leave.
“What about Cora?” Charlie asked. “You might want to tell her not to bother coming in.”
“I’m not expecting her. In fact, you reminded me I need to call her. There’s a good chance I won’t need her this weekend either. I’ve had more cancelations.”
Charlie nodded. He hesitated. “I’m going to start in the guesthouse.”
“Fine,” she said.
“I am sorry about this, Linnet.”
“Are you?”
“Do you want the truth?”
“Yes, I do.”
“I debated whether or not I should hand this whole thing over to the state police. My men…” he paused. “We don’t handle these kinds of investigations often around here, and you know that. It’s a good thing. Oh, hell.” He took a deep breath. “I was worried I couldn’t be impartial. But if your dad is involved in some way…”
“He’s not.”
He held up his hand to stave off her protest. “If he is involved, I want him to be handled by a friend who is, shall we say, mindful of his difficulties.”
“You mean his dementia,” she said. “You can say it, Charlie. It’s not a dirty word.”
He remained quiet for so long, she wondered what he was thinking or if he’d forgotten about his promise to search her property quickly.
“Okay then,” he said. “It’s best you wait here.”
“I have no intention of going anywhere.”
* * *
The second Charlie was out the door, Linnet took off for the guest room that Myna was staying in. Mistake number one, Charlie. Never give a person the opportunity to tamper with evidence. She slipped inside and closed the door behind her, locking it so she’d have an extra minute if, when, Charlie’s men came knocking. There was nothing she could do to help Pop now, not with Charlie going through her father’s things. But maybe she could figure out what Myna had been up to last night. She knew her sister was hiding something. It had been all over Myna’s face, sure as shit, when she’d mentioned she hadn’t gotten much sleep. And then the way she’d put her hand over the birthmark on her forearm, another signal something was amiss.
Maybe Linnet could protect them both if she found out what her sister had been doing before anyone else did. It was an awful thing, not trusting her sister in the way she had when they were young. It’s for your own good, she thought now. And mine, too.
She sat down on the unmade bed and fired up Myna’s laptop. She checked the history. It had been wiped clean. Of course it would be. Myna was a tech genius. She’d know exactly how to cover her cyber tracks. That was good, especially if Charlie’s men decided to poke around in her sister’s business. She put the laptop aside and peeked into Myna’s suitcase.
The first sweater she pulled from the top of the messy pile smelled like her sister. She brought the fabric to her nose. Memories of her childhood flitted across her mind—Myna curled against Linnet’s back while they were sleeping; Myna’s hair draped over Linnet’s arm, heads together, scheming; Myna’s hip pressed against Linnet’s when they’d been drifting in the rowboat on the dam, daydreaming. They’d talked about how they’d live together forever in the B&B with their husbands, their kids growing up as though they were siblings rather than cousins. They’d promised each other deep into the night, when their darkest secrets had been shared, that nothing would ever separate them. No one could keep them apart.
But, oh, how they had been so naive, so terribly wrong.
She clutched the sweater to her chest, feeling the kind of ache in her heart one felt after suffering a painful loss. Sometimes she felt the absence of her sister as sharply as if there had been a death.
It wasn’t until some time had passed that she was able to place the sweater back into the suitcase. As she did, a feather drifted to the floor by her feet.
* * *
“Linnet,” Charlie called from somewhere downstairs.
Linnet hurried from her sister’s room, making sure to leave everything as she’d found it—except the feather, which she took with her. “Coming!” she called, finding Charlie in the dining room in front of the chess set. “What is it?” she asked. “What’s wrong?”
He was holding a clear plastic bag in his hand, the contents a pair of Pop’s loafers.
“What are you doing with Pop’s shoes?” she asked.
Charlie looked at the bag as though he’d forgotten he’d been carrying it. “Right,” he said. “I gather your dad’s wearing his other loafers, the brown ones he always wears.”
“Yes,” she said with certainty. His slippers were placed on the left side of the bed, his brown loafers at the foot near the dresser where he’d find his socks.
“Will you step outside with me for a minute? I want to show you something.”
She followed him to the backyard, but first she stuck the feather inside one of the kitchen drawers. Three of Charlie’s men were standing on the side of the guesthouse. One of the officers was spraying the vinyl siding. Another officer held a UV light.
“What are they doing?” she asked, but she knew exactly what they were doing. She had watched enough television crime shows to know they were looking for blood.
Charlie ignored her question. “Do you recognize this?” he pointed to a pole on the ground where the brush from the woods had bled into the yard. It had a claw-like hook at the end of it. A numbered identification marker was placed next to it.
“Yes,” she said. “It looks like one of the poles they were using to pick up the dead geese.”
Charlie looked it over, his brow furrowing. “I thought the same thing,” he said.
“What does the pole have to do with anything?” she asked.
“We’re trying to figure that out,” Charlie said.
“Did it belong to Professor Coyle?” Her breathing became shallow, and she started to feel warm. She’d seen a pole just like this one in the trunk of the professor’s car.
“I can’t say.”
She nodded, or thought she’d nodded. The officers moved around her, but she was no longer processing the scene. There was a certain dreamlike quality to her vision, her thoughts. Everything was blurry, fuzzy around the edges. A dull throb started in the back of her head. “Do we need to get a lawyer?” she asked.
Charlie’s expression changed. “I think maybe it’s time you did.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Jake walked out of the diner after interviewing Dr. Jenkins. He’d insisted on paying the bill. Myna had reluctantly agreed.
He’d walked the few blocks to Murphy’s after getting her call. He’d needed to gather his thoughts before talking with the doc. Now, he started down the sidewalk back in the direction of the LG and his car. The picketers were coming his way, returning from their earlier march around town hall still holding up their signs, chanting a warning about the impending apocalypse. A
woman handed him a pamphlet as she passed by, the same propaganda she’d given him before.
“Got it,” he said, and considered interviewing a few of the doomsayers from the group. He dismissed the idea almost immediately, although he stopped to take a few pictures. A picture’s worth a thousand words, someone once said. And didn’t someone else say, there are two sides to every story? Who was Jake to argue? He imagined one of his photos in black and white on the front page, while underneath the provocative image, his article of a more scientific nature on Dr. Jenkins’s theory, disproving the end of the world was upon us. The newspaper’s readers could decide which side of the story they wanted to believe.
The air was cool under the cherry blossoms despite the bright sun. His shoulder bag containing his laptop, notes, and wallet swung at his hip with each step. The bag’s strap crossed his chest and pinched his neck. He turned the corner and was surprised to find Myna leaning against her car looking at her phone not two blocks from where he’d left her.
“Is everything okay?” he asked.
“Pop wanted to get his glasses adjusted.” She motioned to the eye care center behind him. “I came outside to see if I could get a signal, but no such luck.” She tucked the phone into the back pocket of her jeans.
An awkward silence followed.
“Look,” she said, finally. “I want to make sure we’re clear about my pop. He’s having one of his good days. Sometimes when he’s having a bad day he seems, oh, I don’t know, confused. He’s suffering from…” She stopped. “This is harder to talk about than I thought.”
“Take your time.” He liked that she was opening up to him, showing a vulnerable side people so often tried to hide. It was also obvious she was having second thoughts about giving him access to her father.
“I want you to write about the man he was before he started having trouble remembering things. The man he was today.” A strand of hair blew across her face, and she pushed it away.
“Of course,” he said, thinking how pretty she looked under the blossoming trees. He sensed she needed something else from him, something other than an article showing her father in a positive light. “May I ask you a question?”
She nodded in an unsure way.
He continued. “Why give me the exclusive interview with him? Why not some other journalist from the bigger papers or the reporters from the national news? I’m small potatoes compared to them.” His phone went off. “Excuse me.” He reached into his jacket pocket and checked the screen. Dennis. He’d been avoiding his texts and phone calls the last few hours. Jake had suspected Dennis wanted him back in the Lehigh Valley to cover other local news, although Jake hadn’t heard of anything big going down. The dead geese had been removed from the dam. The word around town was that the national news teams would be packing it in and moving on. It made sense for Jake to return. He had his exclusive with the doc. All he had to do was type it up, and he could do that anywhere.
But Jake wasn’t ready to go back to his lonely condominium. His work in Mountain Springs wasn’t over. He hadn’t learned much about his father’s accident outside of what the police chief had told him. And he was still waiting for Kim’s call. He had a hunch his father’s old Nokia was his biggest lead finding out whatever it was about his father’s death that had nagged him all these years. He wasn’t going anywhere, he decided, and shoved the phone back in his jacket pocket, unanswered.
“My editor,” he said. “I’ll get back to him later.”
The doc stepped out of the eye care center.
“Remember,” she said to Jake, and turned to get in the car. “I want to see what you write before you send anything to that editor of yours.”
“You got it,” he said, and smiled. She smiled back, but she never did answer his question: Why him? But what did it matter? He’d already decided he’d keep his promise to her.
* * *
Jake pulled into the parking lot of the Mountain Springs Police Department. The lot was empty of cruisers, which seemed a little strange. The building itself was square and made of brick. He pushed the glass door open and stepped inside. The same secretary he’d spoken to the other day when he’d requested a copy of the police report sat behind a large desk. She looked up from the magazine in front of her. Other than the secretary, the place looked deserted.
“I was wondering if you could help me again,” Jake said. “I’m looking for the coroner’s office.”
“The county coroner? Well, you’d have to go to Easton for that. His office isn’t far from the courthouse. Do you know where that is?”
“What about your local coroner?”
“Did someone die? Do you need me to call the chief?”
“No, nothing like that.” He was reluctant to give her any more information. He suspected she might be the town’s busybody.
“Then you’ll want to talk with Chicky.”
“The auto repair guy?”
“Yeah, that’s him,” she said. “Do you know the address?”
“I know it. Thanks for the help.” Jesus, he thought as he walked out. He’d heard about small towns, how the local grocery store clerk could also be the coroner, elected by the citizens to keep local matters insulated and keep outsiders out. It seemed Chicky, the auto repair guy, was one of these: the guy who pronounced people dead, no medical training required.
Jake hopped in his car and drove the few miles to the auto repair shop. Chicky was wiping his dirty hands on a towel when Jake pulled up and got out of the car.
“More engine trouble?” Chicky asked.
“No, but thanks again for taking care of that radiator leak for me,” he said. Chicky was around Jake’s age, but Chicky was shorter, stockier. “I was hoping you could help me out with a more personal matter.”
Chicky stared at Jake a moment as though he were sizing him up. Music played from somewhere in the back of the garage. “All right,” he finally said and put the greasy towel down on the car he’d been working on, the one with the hood up. “Come on back to the office.”
Jake followed him through the garage, where two other cars were waiting to be worked on. Black grime covered the floor. The music got louder as they approached what Chicky had referred to as his office: a small room separated by a glass partition and an entranceway without a door. A girly calendar hung on the wall. The metal desk was surprisingly clean and tidy; a computer sat on top of it next to a cordless phone.
Chicky reached up to turn off an old transistor radio that sat atop the filing cabinet. “My dad’s,” he said. “It was my grandfather’s originally.” He shrugged. “I know what you’re thinking. There’s a lot of great technology out there to play music, but the shop doesn’t feel like the shop without the tinny sound of this old radio playing.”
“I get it,” Jake said. So Chicky had a sentimental side.
“Now, what can I do for you?” Chicky asked.
“I was hoping you had a copy of an old coroner’s report, although I think you were probably too young to be the coroner in this case.”
“It must have been my dad then. He passed a couple of years ago.”
“I’m sorry,” Jake said. “So did mine. Except it was long ago, and it’s his death records I’m looking for.”
“Oh, geez, okay,” Chicky said. “When was it?” he asked and turned to the filing cabinet, putting his back to Jake.
“April 1994.”
Chicky pulled open a drawer and searched through a folder. “Here it is,” he said after looking it over. He handed Jake a single sheet of paper, pointing to a box at the bottom. “You might want to check with the county coroner. Says here the body was transported to them. They might have done an autopsy or toxicology report if they suspected alcohol was involved or anything. If you look here where my dad filled in his statement, he didn’t record the time or cause of death. That tells me there was an investigation. The county coroner or medical examiner handles all the cases where an investigation is required.”
The report looked
as if it had been typed on an old typewriter. Motor vehicle accident was clearly stated at the top, but the cause of death had been left blank like Chicky had said. The county coroner’s report would, of course, give Jake the details he was seeking. He wasn’t sure what he’d expected from Chicky’s dad. Maybe he just wanted to talk with someone who had been there, who had towed his father’s car and pronounced his father dead.
“Thanks for everything,” Jake said. They shook hands.
Jake climbed back into his car, an old familiar resentment clawing its way up his spine. Chicky had more time with his father, more years to build memories. Jake had found himself envious of a stupid transistor radio. He’d felt like this before, on and off through the years, with his football buddies and later with his college friends. He’d watch them with their fathers after games, the high-fives, the hugs when they were kids, the handshakes when they were young men. He’d watched with longing, an ache so deep he’d thought if anyone had been paying attention they’d have seen right through his rib cage to the hole in his heart.
But he’d had his mother. She’d gone to every game, every big event in Jake’s life. He couldn’t tell her how he’d felt at the time, happy she’d been there for him, but sad his father hadn’t been. He’d never break her heart and let her think she hadn’t been enough. He remembered hinting at missing his father only once, when he’d found her cleaning out her bedroom closet five years after his father had passed.
“What are you doing?” he’d asked, guzzling a large glass of water. Several suit jackets with matching pants had been lying on top of his mother’s bed. It had been late August. The days had been long and hot. He’d had to walk the few blocks from the practice field to home carrying his football gear. The coach had worked them extra hard during summer camp, getting them ready for the season. His legs had been tired, rubbery. His shoulders had been sore.
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